


The Wine Dark Sea

by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Artist Stiles Stilinski, Crow Peter Hale, Crow au, Dubious Consent, F/M, HAPPY ENDING FOR STEREK, Lots of Cats, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, NaNoWriMo, Scene of torture - but no one you like, Tarot, Tattooed Stiles Stilinski, but those two do, derek seriously loves gormenghast, mervyn peake, no one else gets one, so i took it out, someone has to, talk of character suicide, there was meant to be peter/sheriff but the scene just stuck out badly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-01-29 04:32:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 49,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12623272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/DarkAthena
Summary: people once believed that when someone died a crow carries their soul to the land of the deadbut sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't restthen sometimes, just sometimes the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things rightThis is a The Crow AU where Peter is brought back, and is helped by Stiles to get his revenge for Lydia and the Hale familythis fic features many dark themes and scenes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DiscontentedWinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/gifts).



> This fic is a nano based on the mythology of The Crow comics by J O'Barr  
> this means it will have adult themes and content - but I do not include actual scenes of non-con although that it happened is a plot point, so be warned, if any of the things that are discussed in fic you feel should be warned for and I haven't, tell me in the comments and I'll add it  
> this is not a cutesy regency romance where nothing bad happens, this is a dark fic with a lot of violence, and a lot of cats  
> the intent is to update every three days with 5k, these might not be natural breaks for chapters which suggests there probably won't be cliffhangers, but enjoy

_He wakes, who never thought to wake again,_

_Who held the end was death_

Rupert Brooke [ **The Life Beyond** , 1910]

 

 

Peter woke the same way that the smoke pulled him under, slowly then all at once. He sat up with a loud gasp and pulled himself standing. It was raining, the rain was torrential and as cold as needles. He wiped the mud from his face and flicked it in gobbets from his fingers.

All he knew was Lydia, the image of her on the swing in her yellow sundress, and her gold-red hair streaming behind her as the sunlight filtered through her hair and the fabric of her yellow sundress and the space between her calves thrown up as she raised them to make the swing go higher.

She had never been to him so beautiful that she was in that moment, and of all the memories that he had of her he was not surprised that that was the one that he retained of her - beautiful in flight and laughing, laughing, with her head cast back to bare the line of her throat to where he was watching.

A large bird, black and oily, sat on the gate to the cemetery, despite the rain and when it cawed, raising its head into the rain, it sounded like Lydia’s laughter so when it took flight he followed it through the streets though it didn’t feel like his body was doing what he wanted it to. His legs felt heavy like they were dragging weights, but his arms were light like they might at any moment float away.

The only thing that made any sense was the sound of Lydia laughing.

The streets were claustrophobic and dark. The rain was coming off the buildings in sheets. There were a few people huddled here and there in doorways, avoiding the rain. An orange flare lit the face of one of them as he lit a cigarette with a flick open lighter, then clicked close and leaving the orange ember of the tip, the moment of fire made the colors of the bird shine like the color of Lydia's eyes.

He would follow her.

He had no other choice.

 

\---

 

Stiles shook off the water from his hoodie as he walked out of the rain and into Crazy Finstock’s All American Diner.

Crazy Finstock’s was the last diner car in Beacon Hills. It was a left over from a failed attempt by Mayor Hale at a regeneration of the area by supporting small businesses although most of those attempts had died with her. Mayor Argent hadn’t cared at all about his predecessor’s plans for the city, and he tried, constantly, to have Crazy Finstock’s demolished as an eyesore to put something that benefited Argent in its place, mostly because Mayor Hale had supported it.

It was an old train car that had been converted into a diner back in the fifties and one side was booths, then a counter with barstools then the other half was the kitchen.

Noah, Stiles' father, was sat in the center booth, he was still wearing his police uniform with a plastic shower cap over his hat to protect it from the rain despite being sat on the vinyl covered bench beside him.

“Kid, what happened to you?” Finstock, the owner of the diner, a man with bulging eyes and hair that looked like he was constantly running his hands through it, asked Stiles as he went to walk past.

Stiles grinned. He grinned as much as he was able to with the stitches in his lip and the ran the hand in the black cast over his freshly shaved scalp. “Funny story,” he said, “you know that ink you told me not to skimp on because the knockoffs would make me really dizzy,” he was wearing an oversized fleece hoodie that looked like it was the pelt of some vast imaginary beast and made for a person at least three times his size, and it being far too large was made worse by his skin-tight jeans. He had piercings up in both ears and a brightly colored creature tattooed through the hair by his ear, something that he called a Baku.

“The gold one?” Finstock asked.

“That’s the one, gorgeous texture, goes on a dream, was marvelling over it when I stood up, my feet went out from under me, I tripped over a cat and went face first into the couch, I had to put my hand down to catch me, but I didn’t,” he started, “so I had to pack my wrist in ice with one hand, cursing up a storm, and go down the stairs and into the street to find my neighbour to take me to the emergency room, and you know that they won’t ever believe you when you say that you’re an artist using toxic material and you didn't crack open a window so they just mark it down as a sex accident, and poor Mrs. Memetovic, you know her, she’s just had her eighty-fifth birthday, and I have to get her up at ten at night to drive me, and she leans forward to drive because she’s like Mister Magoo, and they think she broke me during some acrobatic sex.”

Finstock didn’t laugh, he sighed and gestured to Noah who was picking at his fries as he clearly bit back his complaints about his son’s appearance, more the cast and the bruises, than the loud clothes, piercings, and tattoos. He looked like he had lost a fight with Mrs. Memetovic’s car. His eye was blacked, a bright peach strip bandaid held his nose in place, and there were three black stitches in his lower lip, as well as the black taped cast around his wrist upon which he had put a pink tape love heart.

“Hey, Dad,” he said sliding into the booth, “so you heard all that?”

Noah Stilinski was a handsome man, sandy-haired and blue-eyed, and on the surface, he looked nothing like his brown haired and brown eyed son, but they shared a build, broad-shouldered and slim-waisted. Years of first military, then police service, had given Noah a steel rod in place of a spine where his son was loose-limbed and sprawled across the bench, with both hands, black cast and all, on the melamine table. “Go on, tell me about the dangers of inks imported through eBay at half the price of reputable dealers, or the problems of living in an apartment that might as well be a cat sanctuary.”

“How many of the little monsters are living there now? Ten, twelve?” It was a running joke between them. Stiles left his house open to the stray cats in the area, which his father disapproved of, convinced his son would die of a random feline only disease.

“I’ve stopped counting, if I suspect that one of them is new I just put a flea collar on them, and take them to Deaton for the snip,” he said, “the building has never been so free of vermin, Claudette did drop half a rat on my couch as a gift the other day, but yeah, I pay less in kitty kibble than I did in exterminators.”

“At least no one will try to burgle you,” Noah said, eating his fries, Stiles reached out and stole one, dipping it in his father’s chocolate milkshake before biting it in half. “I don’t question all of your life decisions, kiddo,” Noah said with a disapproving frown, “but that one I have to.”

“What’s not to love, pops, salty and sweet and greasy and crunchy and creamy all in one bite, it’s perfection.”

Noah did not look convinced, “you could order your own food.”

“Yeah, you always get onions, your one fast food night of the week and you get onions, you’ll be up all night farting.”

“I’m on grave-yard shift, ten to six,” Noah told him, “traffic on fourteenth and ninth.”

“Yeah, the precinct still giving you the shitty jobs,” it wasn’t really a question, “I mean considering that Ninth is closed for gasworks.”

“So,” he turned his head, “Bobby, how about some more onions over here,” he shrugged, “it’s not like I have a partner to offend, and you don’t live at home anymore. I can eat all the onions and chili and other things that make me fart.”

“And send you to the ER with heartburn thinking you were having a heart attack,” Stiles said, “Captain Finch can’t still be punishing you for not letting the Hale case go, it’s been ten years.”

 “I’m tracking speeders on a stretch of road that’s closed, what do you think, kid?”

“I think that Finstock makes the best footlong turkey subs with avocado in the state,” he said it loud enough that Finstock would know it was an order, “with chips and Dr. Pepper on the side.”

“You want me to box up the leftover chicken casserole for your feline army?” Finstock asked from where he was stood at the kitchen door.

“You know it, coach, I’m pretty sure that one of these days they’ll abandon me as soon as they figure out where the chicken casserole is coming from, you’ll open the door and they’ll be there going miaow and demanding to be let in, and knowing that you always make it on a Wednesday night and I see you on Thursday I’m sure that’s the day I see all the new ones. You’d miss me and my moggies.”

Finstock mumbled something about being taken advantage of before he left them alone.

“You do make me worry, kid, you sure you don’t want to crash at mine for a night or two, just until after Halloween.” Noah genuinely did look concerned, leaning across the table and cupping his son’s face, tilting it to better inspect the injuries. "The Bowery isn't safe at the best of times and you know Mischief Night brings out the crazies." Mischief night was the night before Halloween and had started as a night to prank the teachers of the local high school and had mutated, like most things in Beacon Hills, into a crime spree.

Stiles sighed, a long slow exhalation, “Dad, I’m fine, really, I mean my cat army can look after itself, it only comes to me for flea collars and Finstock’s chicken casserole,” it was clear that his father was not going to be so easily distracted by his son’s amiable chatter. “I’m not sleeping that great,” he admitted. 

“Have you been to see Morell about it?” his dad asked, “are the dreams back?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, “the really strange thing is I’m beginning to like them,” he laughed a little under his breath, “they’re not so bad anymore.”

His father took a long swallow of his chocolate milkshake before he continued. “Do you think that you need to go back to Eichen?” he asked. Eichen House was the local mental institution, it was an old white pre-war building with a bad reputation. There were those who said, in all honesty, that monsters stalked the halls with old demons and the ghosts of soldiers that the government had experimented on in the sixties, but to Stiles, it had long been a place of safety and security.

Morell was Stiles’ doctor, she was the one who guided him through his dreams, even when they were terrifying she had encouraged him in learning to paint and illustrate, leading him to illustrators like Arthur Rackham and Mervyn Peake whose malformed nightmare versions of stories that Stiles had known had given him more comfort than her medications.

“Actually, no, I’m good, I’m taking my meds, all of them, not just the anti-rejection ones, I’m just on edge, too much coffee, maybe, a funky Chinese gold ink with fumes that could peel paint before I try to sleep I think.”

“Or the army of wild cats in your bed,” his father offered.

“They don’t get in the bed,” Stiles said, though his dad knew perfectly well that they didn’t and why - because they tended to leave half-eaten vermin in there as a gift for him to wake up to, “they don’t need to, there are bean bags and cushions and blankets everywhere. They are a wonderful deterrent to burglars,” he laughed, “imagine breaking in and all those eyes staring at you in the dark.” 

“I thought you got some of them adopted, you said Mrs. Memetovic took some.”

“She did, she took two of Gabriel’s kittens, did I tell you that Gabriel” who had been the first cat to adopt Stiles, “turned out to be Gabrielle, she surprised me with five kittens, Dr. Deaton took three of them, he says it much easier to find homes for healthy babies than half feral street cats, but, yeah, Mrs Memetovic took the last two, one of them was the one with the wonky leg, I put a picture of her on Instagram, you might have seen it, I think she’s lonely, Mrs. Memetovic that is, we have lunch on a Monday before I go with her to the craft thing at the library, she’s lovely for such a mean old lady, but yeah she took two, and a bag of kitty kibble, I think there’s fourteen living with me at the moment.” 

“You know the legal limit for pets is four in California,” his dad said.

“If I had pets, dad, I’d agree, as it is I’m sort of a halfway house, they come to me, get a flea collar, spayed or neutered, whether they’re keen on that or not, and there’s food if they want it, they come and go as they please, I don’t even name them anymore.” His father lifted an eyebrow showing how much he believed him. “Okay, I name them, but at least I don’t live alone - if I could just get one of them to learn to drive for the next time I’m doing goldwork we’d be golden.”

Noah did not look best pleased with that information, “I worry, kid,” he said, “it’s my prerogative as your dad to worry before you say anything, do you want to tell me about your dreams?”

Stiles sighed, it seemed to rattle around in his chucks before he let it out in a low slow exhalation that lowered his shoulders and caused his head to droop a little. “It’s not always the same, but there’s one that happens most often, it’s like a home video, I’m watching it but I’m not part of it, she’s on the swing.”

“She?” his dad asked him, putting his hand on Stiles’ cast to reassure him that he was there, that Stiles was not alone in this, even if he felt like he was.

“I don’t know who she is, I don’t have a name or anything, but she’s beautiful, dad, she has this strawberry blonde hair and this yellow sundress, she’s on this swing in a garden and sometimes it’s covered in vine roses and sometimes it’s just a kid’s swing set, but she’s laughing with her head thrown back and her legs out and she’s lost one shoe, and she’s so beautiful, dad,  I painted her.”

“I can see why the dream doesn't seem so bad if that’s it,” Noah conceded.

“They are in a garden, there are chrysanthemum bushes and camellias and the air is sweet,” His voice was dreamy and distant, his fingers stopped twitching on the melamine.

“They?” Noah pressed, he didn’t want to let Stiles get too far into the headspace of the dream.

“The man that loves her,” Stiles had taken on a distant, almost whimsical tone as if he himself was in a trance, “he loves her so much, Dad, and she loves him too, and they’re happy. She goes from the swing to his arms, there is no in-between, she is on the swing and then she’s not. But I think I’ll go mad because he loves her so much. I hope someone loves me like that someday.” He couldn’t help the wistful tone of his voice as he spoke.

“That’s not a bad dream, kid,” Noah said. It was true, he could not see what was so terrible about it. Stiles’ dreams had always woken him screaming and thrashing.

“That’s not all of it,” Stiles frowned, “he has his arms around her, she’s so small in comparison, like she fits into the gaps he leaves, she’s so tiny, and then the wind comes and the sky changes, it’s hot and smoky and dry, and when it hits them they start to tear apart, like embers in this hot wind, and hers look like curls of paper, slowly burning, and his turn into crows.” He took his dad’s milkshake and took a long pull from the straw to try and stop the shaking in his hands. “If the dream stops there it’s not so bad, “ he stopped, “it’s bad but it’s,” he paused, “I’m okay with it, but it doesn't always stop there.

“The crows, they turn around and swing back over the garden and it’s in flames and there are bodies, they are curled up and so small, like they belong to kids, and there are camellias bursting into flame and a woman, handsome with a snub nose,  and she’s laughing,” the glass was juddering in his hands against the melamine, “she’s laughing and laughing and they’re babies, dad, and they're burning and she just keeps laughing.”

He went to wipe at the tears on his face that he could not prevent but nearly struck himself in the face with his cast before using his other arm, showing the tattoo there on the inside of his wrist, “even when I’m awake, dad, I can hear her laughing.” He was shaking and jumped when Finstock put his sub on the table with his Dr Pepper.

“You need a cup of tea, kiddo?” Finstock asked him, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost, or a rat, or the ghost of a rat which would be worse because then we’d be looking for a dead rat.”

“Jesus, Bobby,” Noah blurted out, still shaken by seeing Stiles so upset, “you wanna get Argent to shut this place down, talking about the missing corpses of rats.”

Finstock shrugged, “you been coming in here since someone,” he flicked his eyes to Stiles, “was yay high and dragging an oxygen tank behind him, and I had to yell at old man Lahey to stop smoking or we’d all go up, if you found half a rat in your burger you’d keep quiet in case I charged you extra for artisanal toppings,” Finstock’s crazy had eased the tone, “I’ll get you some of that stinking tea you swear by,  I think I've got a box under the counter.” He wiped his hands on his apron and went back to the kitchen to Noah’s thanks to him that Finstock chose to ignore.

Stiles was still shaking when he took large swallows of his soda, putting it down, but keeping his hands around it, as he belched. “The dreams aren’t so bad anymore,” he admitted, “I’m getting real good at waking up before it gets too bad, sometimes I just see her on the swing.”

“Are you sleeping, because I know what you’re like when the dreams,” they never referred to them as nightmares, they were the dreams, and always with the definitive article, “are bad.”

“I’m not taking the sleeping pills, dad,” Stiles was defiant about that, “I hate the way that they make me feel, they don’t stop the dreams either, I just can’t wake myself up at all, and then I’m trapped there watching these babies burn and she’s stood there and she laughs and laughs, and Morell just changes my prescription and it doesn’t help. So I get up, I paint, and I work through my order list, and I try to nap and sometimes I just use gold ink and fall over my own damn feet,” he was attempting to lighten the tone but judging by the look on his father’s face it wasn’t working. 

“You look like you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks.” Noah wasn’t impressed by that knowledge.

“It looks worse because of the bruising, but I actually fell asleep with the cats yesterday, no dreams, just me and a beanbag, I woke up and I had a purring quilt. They don’t normally have much to do with me, furry little ingrates that they are, except Gabriel, he likes to watch Netflix with me, he really likes the Marvel shows, but yeah, most of them were using me as a personal space heater. I am sleeping, Dad, I am eating, I’m just not doing it all in one go.” Finstock put a cup of tea, string still hanging over the edge of the cup, on the bag, with a spoon on the saucer, “Hey, coach, you wanna cat?”

 It was a perfect change of tone and caused Finstock to go off on a tangent about hating cats, why he hated cats and continued on about a personal anecdote about how he had gone looking for a missing kid in the preserve in winter and ended up losing a testicle, then veered into a rant about medical bills and shitty insurance coverage, and how he’d gone top tier when he’d been shot by an arrow when he was a high school PE coach before leaving to follow his bliss using the payout to buy the diner, but most of it was defying Mayor Argent with something that Mayor Hale, may she rest in peace, had put in place specifically for Finstock that Argent couldn’t legally overthrow and everyone knew it would be so convenient for the place to burn down, especially as Mayor Hale had died in that terrible fire,  so that even the State News would pick it up, and in a state with both San Francisco and LA it had to be big news for the State news to notice.

After they had eaten and Noah had left to start his shift, because Finch insisted he be there an hour before his patrol started, Stiles collected their empty plates and his tea on the counter where he intended to finish it. He had embraced his dad, and they exchanged proclamations of love. It was how they always ended their weekly meetings.

As Finstock gathered the plates he stopped, “look, kid, you know that I’m not one to interfere, but something you said made me think of something,” he put the plates and fry baskets into a plastic tub to bring to the dishwasher, “remember when you used to come in with your Mom,” Stiles nodded. His mother had died over ten years before but the wound was still fresh. “You’d come in after going to the hospital and sit in that booth,” he gestured with his head to the one, “and you’d share a banana split with low-fat ice cream and no whip, and she’d get a sprite and you’d have that sugar free caffeine free shit,” years later and Finstock remembered their order, “but you’d sit there,” he gestured to the booth again, “and draw with your crayons,” Stiles remembered it too. As a child, he had been incapable of running and playing with the other kids, because of his poor health, and even drawing with his crayons often exhausted him. It had been before he had gotten his new heart back when he had gone everywhere with his oxygen tank dragged like a wagon behind him. He was only allowed ice cream when he went to the hospital.

“You were crying because some little shit called Jackson Whittemore had stolen your black crayon and you were going through a phase where you were obsessed with crows, but you couldn’t draw them and more than anything I wanted to strangle the little bastard for doing that, and you told me something that stuck with me, and you mentioning crows today reminded me.” He wiped his hands on his apron which he only did when he was stalling, “you said that people once believed that when someone died a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. It freaked me out, I’m not going to lie you were being kept alive by a medical miracle and you were talking about the afterlife, I mean,” he paused, “but that was only half of it, you said that people once believed that when someone died a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead but sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest, then sometimes, just sometimes the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right. You said the words were important, that they had to be exact.”  

He took a pause and wiped his hands again before he continued, “your mom always said you had the shining, I figured that didn’t mean that you got periods let alone bad ones, maybe it means nothing, but I remember it so clearly, I had to tell you.”

Stiles slowly finished his tea, “I wouldn’t have minded if you had killed Jackson Whittemore over that black crayon,” he touched his chest, and the scar there through his graphic tee, “but thanks, coach, it means a lot you remember.”

 

\---

 

Peter followed the bird up the fire escape on the side of the building. The torrential winter rain had washed most of the mud from his face and pressed his hair down over his forehead. He felt empty as if someone had hollowed him out and left parts of him at the edges but when he blinked he saw Lydia on the swing with holiness about her like a halo of sunshine but then he opened his eyes again to the dark and the rain and the tall buildings close about him.

The crow wanted him to climb - so he did. Hand over hand up the ladder and onto the metal grille so he could climb the steps to the top floor where there was a small flat roof with an air conditioning unit and a sash window that was slightly ajar.

He felt a strange resistance as if tiny hooks were pulling him back as he opened the window wide enough climb into the apartment with the crow hopping in after him out of the rain.

It was a huge loft with brick walls, but someone had layered soft furnishings everywhere, there were floor cushions and thick wool rugs that looked knitted with yarns as thick as his arms, fur blankets draped over the blue velvet couch and in the well of light under the skylight, beside a wrought iron staircase was a drafting table set for a forty five degree angle with a half-finished piece stuck to it with tape. There was a desk chair with no arms, and a wheeled cabinet covered in brushes, pens, and bottles of ink in various states of emptiness.

The back wall was covered in canvasses, some of which were as small as a postcard and at least one of which was six feet across.

It was the huge canvas that caught his attention, it was sat amongst surreal horror paintings, there was a black dog made of shadows in tall grass as disembodied hands reached for it. There was a photorealistic image of a highway framed between hills and something vast with wings and tentacles in place of a face appeared in the clouds above it. There was a closed subway station, the platform closed off with yellow tape and the train halted as police officers investigated the corpse of something inhuman clearly struck by the carriage, lit in stripes from the ceiling fluorescents and one officer’s torch. A beautiful, black-haired, woman dressed only in white threads lay in a bed of red spiders of varying size that clamored towards her. There was a line drawing of an anatomical examination of what it called a wendigo, an emaciated creature of bone and tooth and hair.

All of the paintings were exquisite and macabre, but framed on the wall were tarot cards, sometimes the same card in a cluster, but variants of the design, shop bought and rare, even some anime styles.

As he walked towards the central painting, the one that transfixed him, a tortoiseshell American longhair cat began to twine around his ankles, and without thinking he bent down to pick it up, holding it to his chest like a buffer against the image on the one canvas on the wall.

It was Lydia.

It was Lydia as she had been in life, and her head was thrown back in laughter.

It was Lydia as he saw her every time he closed his eyes, caged in an eternal moment of flight in the yellow sundress she had bought when she went shopping with Laura that day that some douchebag kid broke Laura’s heart, and the black ballet pumps she got in New York, because she hated wearing heels, and one was hung off a pantyhosed toe. She only wore heels because she was only five foot two and everyone else was so tall so she said it made her feel like a hobbit.

The memories struck him like a wrecking ball almost knocking him off his feet.

Lydia in a peach merry widow and her highest heels with one foot against the door frame, a suspender belt holding up her neon blue pantyhose and the taste of her on his lips and the smell of her thick in his nose.

Lydia laid out on hotel sheets with her hair undone and a smear of tinted cherry lip balm on his thumb as she laughed at his hair, sleep swept and fluffy.

Lydia as he saw her through the smoke as the blonde woman told her friends she didn’t care what they did as long as they threw her on the fire when they were done.

Lydia in their home, how she’d she stood so shyly before she pulled her dress up over her head and broke into a run so he would chase her, and he had.

Lydia at the dining table with Talia and Evie sat on her lap as she tried to feed her mashed peas and the baby hadn’t wanted anything to do with it so both of them ended up covered.

Lydia at the stove as he walked up behind her to bury his face in the hairs at the back of her neck, how it smelled sweetly of apples and coconuts and the pillowy flesh of her stomach.

Lydia screaming for him as the beams of the roof came down.

Lydia looking back at him as she counted the amount of shopping bags in his arms and smiling before going into another store.

Lydia screaming.

Lydia sitting on the stool in front of the mirror and letting him brush out her hair, running it through his hands and over his palm as he dragged the brush through it, and the smell of her perfume, Miss Dior, so soapy when she first put it on until it became floral sweet later in the day, lingering in the line of her throat.

Lydia.

Behind him, the light flicked on.

The young man that came in had a shaved head, both ears were pierced with studs and chains, and he was bruised like he had lost a fight with a truck, “hey, Crow,” he said as he peeled his wet coat off and ran the hand  that was not broken over his shorn scalp to wipe away the rain, he had put a white catering bucket with a lid down at his feet as he did so, “I wondered when you’d show up,” he continued without even looking at Peter, “I’ve been dreaming about you for months.”


	2. Chapter 2

The young man, and he couldn't have been more than twenty, didn’t seem to react the way that Peter thought that he should do to a stranger in his house. After he had removed his coat, hanging it on the outstretched arm of an antique free standing coat hook, he lifted the white catering bucket and went into the small kitchen, putting it on the counter and cracking it open.

Cats appeared from everywhere. They surged from under cushions and furniture, jumped down from high places and seethed in from other doors as he started to ladle whatever was in the bucket into dishes on the counter. Peter could not have said how many cats there were, there was more than ten and perhaps less than twenty, in all manner of colours and sizes, and even the cat in Peter’s arms jumped down and joined the tide of cats swirling around his ankles making the boy look like the pied piper of Beacon Hills.

They seethed around his feet as he plated up what was in the bucket, but none of them tried to jump on the counter to hurry their meal as he chattered away to them.

After he had put the plates on the floor he turned to the crow who was watching the proceedings and jumping from one leg to the other on the windowsill, making little caws, not at all bothered by the cats eating at his feet. “Don’t think that I’ve forgotten you, pretty girl,” he said and ran the knuckle of one finger under her beak against her breast, and she let him, and preened at the attention, “I’ve got something just for you,” he had an old style mini mint green refrigerator next to a large modern one and from it he pulled a foam tray of raw meat. The crow got so excited that she was loud enough to disturb the cats in their meal for more than one looked at the bird licking its lips. “Wait a minute, Ligeia,” he said, “let me warm it up for you first.”

“What did you call her?” Peter asked from the kitchen entrance, it was a hole in the brick wall, as he put the tray into the microwave.

“Ligeia,” the boy answered, “she’s a crow, what would you call her? I could hardly call her Edgar could I?” he was fussing the bird who jumped on to his hand, “and she’s the prettiest girl, my pretty little girl, far too pretty for me to call Edgar, isn’t she? I thought it was rather a propos, what with Ligeia coming back from the dead and all.” He popped open the microwave and put the tray on the window sill, letting the crow hop down to eat it. It was tiny slices of raw meat and fat and pieces of gristle but it delighted the crow. She cawed loudly before bobbing her head to pick up strips of the meat to swallow them down. “I get it from the butcher, he’d just throw it out otherwise, it’s just offcuts and scraps, I’m not sure that he knows what it’s for, I think he’s scared to ask in case I'm using it for my paintings or demon worship or something, but he doesn’t charge me for it,” from a cabinet he pulled two cups, “tea?” he asked, “I don’t drink coffee,” he flicked on the kettle.

“You don’t know me, I could be an ax murderer,” Peter said, “I’ve broken into your apartment.”

“There are three reasons that I know that’s not true, Crow,” the boy said with a smile that crinkled the bruises around his eye and pulled at the stitches on his lip, “one, Ligeia brought you to me,” he was counting it off on the fingers of the hand in his black cast, “two, you got in here despite all the protections I have in place and all of my familiars, I have a lot of familiars,” he leaned back against the counter, long and lean, hips thrust forward. The boy was beautiful, wearing skin tight damp red jeans and a blue plaid overshirt and a black graphic tee but the juxtaposition of clothes that were almost too small with clothes that were far too large suited him, it made him look like a gift to be unwrapped, revealing beautiful things underneath. “And three,” his teeth seemed very sharp, it was a fox’s smile with his golden eyes almost glowing in the overhead electric light, “you don’t have an ax.”

Peter laughed, even though it surprised him that he could.

“Why don’t you go use the shower,” the boy said, “there are fresh towels in the hamper, I’ll find you something dry to wear.”

“I,” Peter clearly had no idea what was going on and was overwhelmed.

“Go shower,” the boy repeated, “through the bedroom at the top of the staircase,” he gestured to the spiral staircase beside the drawing board, “but close the bedroom door on your way, I don’t let the cats in there.”

 

Peter came down, he had thought that it was the winter rain that left him so cold but despite the hot running water he could not warm through. He was surprised how much mud had washed off him from his hair, and he spat some up. There was a fresh toothbrush in a wrapper in a plastic cup and he brushed his teeth several times before his mouth felt clean, but the black towels were soft and there was a lovely print of the tarot card Temperance on the wall so that the jug of water poured endlessly into the toilet from the arms of a beautiful girl.

The flash of humor made it easier for him.

He went down the spiral staircase in just the towel. “I should get my sketchbook,” the boy said, he had removed his sneakers and jeans, wearing a pair of loose basketball shorts to show a pair of shapely calves and what looked like old lady slippers, soft red velour with gold thread crests over the toes. It was clear that he spent his money mostly on materials and the cats. With his overshirt gone his arms were on display. The design on one arm was a series of stylised camellias in a cage of rowan and hawthorn that went down to his elbow and was cut off by his cast, on the other biceps was a white fox with red markings running through curls of smoke. They were gorgeous pieces of art and Peter suspected that they meant something. There was a girl reclining on the inside of his healthy wrist. On the outside of one thigh, poking out from under the fabric of his shorts, was a red oblong full of Japanese calligraphy.

He sprawled on the couch as the very image of youth and beauty.

There was a pile of clothes sat on the drawing board’s stool, but there was a fat ginger cat with one eye and tattered ears squatting on them like a demon, flashing sharp little teeth at him when he tried to shoo it off. “Oh, I see why Ligeia brought you to me,” the boy said, “an ass like that is far too good to waste.”

Strangely Peter did not feel objectified by the boy’s comments, it almost felt like rote, that the boy was complimenting him because he felt like he should. “I’m married,” Peter answered.

“And dead,” the boy was blunt in how he said it, like a blow, "it does hamper your chances with me, I'm afraid".

Peter started, turning as the boy finished what he was saying. He dropped the pants that he was pulling up so that they pooled around his ankles, the boy said nothing about it, instead he stood up and raised his arms above his head and stretched with a groan, it revealed a flash of dark hair leading under his shorts, a surprisingly adult treasure trail leading under his shorts and the flash of an Adam’s girdle considering how young he looked. “My turn to use the shower,” as he walked past Peter he handed him a red leather bound sketchbook that he had pulled from the bookcase, “here,” he put the book on the clothes when Peter wouldn’t take it, “it’s a place to start,” then he climbed the staircase, closing the bedroom door behind him.

Peter finished dressing quickly without the boy there the cats seemed a lot more malevolent and there were plenty of pairs of eyes watching his every move.

There was a black henley and moleskin pants, and a dove grey leather vest that he pulled on but did not button up. Once he was dressed, complete with socks, he found a space on the couch trying not to be intimidated by the purring. At least five cats were on the couch and all of them were making their presence known by purring, making the couch almost vibrate with it and the sound ominous.

He opened the sketchbook.

There were images that the boy could not have known.

He could see the Hale house where he had grown up. It was the house that his sister had borne and raised her children. The house as it had been before the fire. 

The house where Peter had died.

Then on the next page were the kids, sketched in roughly with a fine ink nib, but he could recognize all of them playing in the shadow of the house, in the yard where Peter had parked his car. Derek sat with baby Evie on the porch, his sister had put a bow in her hair though she barely had enough to wash, and there was a book in front of them. Cora was chasing Laura with a water balloon, Cora was wearing a striped top and was missing a front tooth, her ponytail coming loose and little Max was running after them, on sturdy little baby legs where he fell more often than he walked.

If the day had happened, and Peter couldn't be sure, there was no way that the boy could have seen it, the Hales had always been private and the five kids had always played amongst themselves, they had had no near neighbors to join them in the wilderness around the house.

The next page had Lydia as he wanted to remember her. 

She had her head on his shoulder as they crashed on the couch of their small downtown apartment, she was wearing one of his tees, and he was just wearing sweats. The image was intimate and his heart caught seeing her.

He saw Talia stood at a podium, standing tall and proud and beautiful, with a victory banner behind her and her husband to her right as someone, Peter couldn’t tell who specifically, watched on and something about the image felt malevolent.

The next page was the house burning.

After that the tone changed, they were still raw ink sketches, black lines that felt loose and wild and caught them so deftly, but other colors appeared, primarily yellows and reds washing into the black.

There was a crow in flight, its feathers reflected the colors of the fire.

A vast sea the color of a merlot and the crows flew above it as Talia stood with Max, wading into the water, Evie still in her arms and Cora just behind.

The ruins of the house and there were portraits surrounding it in golden frames, but they were not the Hale family.

Peter did not know who they were.

There was a boy with dead eyes and a smile like a serial killer with sandy hair falling across his forehead. He might have been attractive if there had been anything behind his eyes.

There was a swarthy man with black eyes and hair and a cruel twist to his mouth, there was blood spattered in wine red drops across his cheek.

There was a man with a receding hairline and a roman nose, thin lips and a pointed chin, he managed to look cruel.

There was a woman with a smirk on her lips and a leonine mane of hair, she was handsome despite a snubbed nose and dismissive air to her posture.

There were three other portraits but they were in silhouette, and at least one of them was a woman.

The next page was seen through the fallen beams of the burning house, the man with the roman nose was holding Lydia’s face as she cried and the swarthy man stepped closer fussing with his belt buckle.

There was Lydia in a hospital bed with machines and wires all around her. There was a policeman sat next to her, holding her hand, although he could see the flatline on the machine.

There was Derek, he was still a teenager in the picture, stood next to Laura, with an open grave before them, and a statue of an angel with its wings pinned down by chains, and crows on the fence watching them. Beacon Hills cemetery had always leaned towards the macabre.

Laura with her arms wide as she fell, there was a tall building behind her, and her white dress was rippling as the crows flew beside her.

There was Derek sat in what might have been an office, it was hard to tell but he was blindfolded, with strings coming from every joint as a shadowy figure behind him controlled his every move.

There was a pawn shop surrounded by black buildings, it was lit to make it stand out, the light reflected on the puddles on the sidewalk in front of it.

There was Peter climbing out of an open grave with a crow on the cemetery gates.

The last pages of the sketchbook were blank.

When he looked up, trying to process what it was that was drawn on the pages in front of him the boy had returned. He was wearing another pair of skin-tight jeans, black this time, with what looked like a lady’s tee curved into his slim waist, and in tiny white print it said “I heart boys” across breasts he did not have where the heart was a little red symbol. He had changed one set of the piercings so that he had feathers twisting around to frame the curve of his ears. His outfit, designed as it was to attract, just made him look younger to Peter. It was also clear that it was not for Peter that he had dressed up, and what flirting he had done was by rote.

Peter didn’t say anything at first, the words swirling around him as he clutched the sketchbook with white knuckles. Eventually, as the boy started to dig around under the couch for his chucks Peter found his voice. “How?”

The boy turned, holding his shoe, and took a deep breath before he started to talk, falling back onto the couch with a sound that could only be called a flump. “Not a clue,” he said honestly, pulling on one of the sneakers, “I’ve always been able to, I dream and it happens or it has happened, so I started to draw it. Morell,” he realized that Peter had no idea who that was because he stopped and changed direction.

“I was sick, really sick for a really long time, I got very sick when I was a baby and I didn’t really get better, so they thought that what I was doing was that, that it was because I was so sick, so they brought me to Dr Fenris,” he scrubbed his hand over his hair, “he didn’t get it, so as I got older I was in and out of Eichen, because it was quiet there, and that’s where I met Morell. She recognized what was happening, what I was doing,” he touched the tattoo on his thigh with his fingers, tracing over the design before he continued. “I can do things, my mom called it the Shining, because we didn’t have another name for it. She was the only one who believed me when I was a kid, and then she died.” He switched feet, the first being lace up now and hitting the ground heavily as he swung the other up to his thigh. “Morell thinks it’s because I was so close to death and came back, but your guess is as good as mine. I can do things, I can’t explain it because it’s like thinking, I can do it but I don’t know how, and the more I think about it the more confusing it gets.”

He had a sort of itchy twitchy restlessness, he was poured out across his chair in a lazy looking sprawl now he was done with his shoes, but he looked like he might at any moment explode into action. He was beautiful in his youth and vibrancy, but there was something brittle and sharp-edged about him, like the blade of a knife.

“My ink,” he said, noticing the way that Peter looked at him like he was cataloging what he saw, “it reminds me that my skin is my own.” Peter suspected that there was a story there that the boy chose not to share, and for all that he talked the boy revealed very little about himself.

“Why?” It seemed that all of Peter’s questions started with that word.

“I can only tell you what I know, and it's not much,” the boy said, throwing his arms over the back of the couch. “People once believed that when someone died a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead but sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest, then sometimes, just sometimes the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right. Ligeia brought you back now for a reason, she brought you to me for a reason, but I don’t know what those reasons are, I just know that I’m meant to give you that book, those pictures and that you coming to me is my cue.”

“Your cue?” Peter asked him.

The boy patted a rectangular lump in his jeans pocket that looked like a deck of cards, it was a nervous gesture like he was checking that it was there. “Of course, it would happen the day that I look like I’ve lost a fight with the couch,” he started to pick at the fabric tape of his cast, pulling at the loose strings, “you’re not the only one with something to do.”

“How long?” Peter asked him.

The boy stopped picking at the cast, he seemed unable to sit still and before his hands rested he pressed his palm to his sternum, “ten years,” he said at last, “it’s been ten years, they think they’ve gotten away with it, but not any more, not now, Crow. I know some things because of the dreams, and some because of my dad. They keep trying to get him to resign because he won’t let it go, they want him to stop investigating but he won’t, he can’t let it go,” he scratched at his jaw where he had clearly just shaved when he was in the shower. “I put what faces I know into the book. I know the woman was responsible, I hear her laughing,” his eyes looked a little wild, golden and hard but flickering back and forth as if he was panic. “I see her when I close my eyes.”

“And Lydia?” Peter looked across at the giant canvas, so out of place amongst the surreal horror pieces.

The boy licked his lips, “was that her name?” he asked, lowering his eyes from Peter’s and scratching at his sternum, “I didn’t know,” he realized what he was doing and stopped. He had a plethora of nervous habits and it was clear he was trying not to. “I carry your heart with me,” he said and his tone was different as if someone else pulled the words from his mouth so that they fell from his lips like dead moths. “I carry it in my heart.”

The words had a magic of their own and he seemed to say them outside of his own volition, but the spell was cast, pulling the black velvet duster from the hook by the door, with the sketchbook in the back of his pants Peter left the apartment.

 

Peter had met Lydia in his first lecture of the spring semester. She was sat front and centre of the lecture hall and didn’t take any notes as he spoke about Frankenstein and how different groups took different things from the monster, how the gay community especially with the film, had found a kindred spirit, and how organ donation patients felt that they had been made monstrous with someone else’s body parts, but how neither of those applied to the novel and yes he would be marking people down for those arguments because he had heard them a hundred times and they weren’t about the novel.

Lydia sat in the front row, with her legs crossed, playing with a cherry red lollipop, painting it against her lips and the inside of her cheeks and she was determined to distract him. It was working. He almost lost himself, almost.

Afterwards, she waited, staying where she was in her seat, as students asked him questions about the book, at least one of which needed to be answered during his office hours. When they were gone she walked up to him, she was wearing a plum colored sweater dress that fell off one shoulder and black patent demi boots, with her hair braided in a crown about her head, with long black tassel earrings, he remembered that clearly because he was in jeans and a tee shirt with an open vest and a scarf, and he had thought he was well dressed until he saw her.

“You’re going to take me out for coffee,” she said and it was possible that he fell in love with her in that moment. Later he could not have been more specific, she had decided that she wanted him, so she had taken him, and he hadn’t really had a choice in the matter. He learned quickly that he hated to make her unhappy, even if it did result in spectacular make-up sex.

“It’s inappropriate,” he said it so firmly, “as your professor, the university,”

She laughed, “I’m not a student,” she said, “but I’m flattered that you think I look so young, I work for the maths department and I saw you coming in and,” she popped the sucker back into her mouth, “I’m an experimental geometer.”

“I have no idea what that is,” he announced, “but I must admit to being impressed by it.” He gathered up his lecture notes and was tapping them on the lectern, “and that means we can go for coffee, Miss,” he left it open so she could tell him her name.

“Doctor,” she corrected automatically, “Lydia Martin.”

Peter shoved the papers into the satchel, not caring if he crumpled or tore them, “Peter Hale, but you knew that already,” he smiled at her, liking the way that they were flirting, “and if you’re new here then you don't know that there is the most wonderful coffee shop near here, it’s a bit further than the chain brand if you don’t mind the walk.”

“A walk on a fine day with a handsome gentleman, why would I want it to end?”

 

Lydia didn’t laugh at his jokes unless they were funny. She took an extra shot of espresso in her coffee and dipped her cookies, she always pulled the foam from the back of her spoon with a long suck, and he was enchanted by her. He loved the way that she walked, which, she admitted much later in their relationship, that she had cultivated so that people took her more seriously. She said she held her head, rolled her shoulders back to push out her breasts and walked like she’d been sent to kill Captain America. She stood just over five foot tall, a rockabilly doll with soft curves and the shadow of a slow Texas drawl she worked hard to rid herself of but the more that she got flustered the more obvious that it became - she was convinced no one would take her seriously like that so she remade herself into someone new.

For her entire life she had been underestimated, she said, because she was beautiful and young and it didn’t matter how smart she was, or how brilliant her work in non-Euclidian geometry - which Peter could not begin to understand and did not try to, she got a similar glazed look when he started talking about books so they considered it a fair trade-off - was, people saw her and dismissed her out of hand.

Years before he met her he had had a relationship, brief and mostly sexual, with one of the professors in the Russian department based entirely on the shared love of the poetry of Aphra Behn. They had parted amicably when they both agreed that they liked her poetry more than each other, and Peter was always pleased to see him in the hallways or interdepartmental mixers that everyone hated.

With Lydia she did now know the poets that moved him, she was a constantly undiscovered country, and he knew that he could introduce them to her, he could read her Pablo Neruda in bed and watch it move her for the first time, and that was something that he loved in her. Just as he was dazzled with her passion even though he could not understand the topics that she was passionate about. He loved her for her brilliance and her beauty and a hundred other things besides. He would have loved her as fiercely if she was a cave troll and she would laugh when he told her that as if she accepted it as a compliment but didn’t believe a word of it.

Sometimes, in the early mornings, before she had showered and had her coffee, she would have her hair unbrushed and was scratching indecorously at some body part or another, he’d call her his little cave troll and she’d answer with a grunt because she was not a morning person. In the mornings she was barely a person and she still dazzled him - and that’s how he knew that it was love.

 He remembered the moment he had seen her and been dazzled by how he felt for her, because it had seemed to come from nowhere, she was sat in his favourite chair in the Hale house, the one that was under the craft lamp, and she had Max on her knee, he had been no older than two, and still sucking on his pacifier because he had not wanted to stop with it, and she was reading to him, but instead of some story about fictitious beasts she was reading to him an essay about higher mathematics and making silly voices as she did it. Cora was laid on the floor playing with lego and Lydia had never been maternal, she had no idea what to do with babies, and Cora had only just become interesting because she was old enough to hold a conversation, Talia had been pregnant with Evie at the time but Peter didn’t remember where she and her husband were. Derek was on the couch with the tip of his tongue stuck out as Laura tried to teach him how to crochet for a school project of his, and Laura had had one earbud in and was listening to something as she tried to explain to her brother, and they had been huddled together, dark haired and olive skinned like their mother.

Peter had half expected to come back from the store to find the house in flames and Lydia covered in cookie dough and baby vomit going I don’t know how it happened as the chaos unfolded but she had coped with four children ranging from fourteen to two and even if she had not enjoyed it she didn’t look like she was about to pull her hair out.

He had made the decision then to marry her. And lying in bed that night he had asked her if she wanted children and she had laughed and laughed and laughed.

 

He had proposed to her in Cambridge, in the tearoom next to the Fitzwilliam Museum, waiting until she had taken a huge bite of a doughnut to slide the ring box across the table, knowing that she couldn’t act the way that she wanted to, hands covered with sugar and she could neither suck it away - her mouth was full, or wipe her hands on the napkin her coffee was sat on, so around the mouth full of dough she called him a bastard because she knew he had done it on purpose.

He had spent weeks with Laura, looking online, in catalogs, in stores, and hiding it from her, which he hated doing because he hated keeping secrets from her, but watching her expression going from fond annoyance to horror to wonder made it worth it. It was a gold band that looked like Venetian lace with diamonds in the picots. It had looked so natural on her hand, or hanging on a chain between her breasts, drawing his eye there.

She was beautiful, she had a soft oval face with wide green eyes that made her look younger, that she used dark liner around the outside to highlight, other than she maintained a nude look, and wore her hair flat, parted at the side and tucked behind her ears, she always wore earrings, studs for the day and drops for the evening if they went out.

He loved running the pad of his thumbs over the line of her eyebrows, and the way that she licked her lips when she looked at him like she was a cat who very much wanted the cream. She was his everything, he could feel her under his fingertips, the warmth of her skin, and the feather softness of her hair, and the noises she made when his mouth was on her, her fingers twisting through his hair and her feet on his back, with the weight of her thighs upon his shoulders, the way her stomach jerked when she came, and the giggling laugh she couldn’t help during sex, the one that always made him hard and aching.

He loved how she was so small and could fit on his lap to wrap her arms around his neck and pushed his face into her breasts, and he could breathe her in as she curled her legs over his thighs and let her shoes fall to the floor so they slapped on the wood and she’d almost bury herself in his warmth.

She had decided she wanted him and he had been helpless before her, and wouldn’t have had it any other way.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> right, that's the info dumping out of the way, i can get on with the murderin'  
> please tell me you're in love with lydia at the end of this chapter - or at least in love with the way he loves her  
> i've been picking at that bit for hours - i'm losing my damn mind


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter starts his revenge and we get to meet Derek

The pawn shop looked exactly as it had in the pages of the sketchbook that the boy had given Peter. It was a single story whitewashed block at the back of an empty parking lot, with hanging stage lights illuminating the sign, but on either side of it were abandoned industrial buildings so that the ugly squat brick of it stood out as even more of an eyesore. With the constant winter rain, the empty lot’s tarmac was dotted with pools of opalescent orange fire with the reflection of the sodium streetlights and oil leaks from cheap broken down cars. It looked like windows into a Dantesque Hell, as if the door with its closed signs was the gate to the underworld and it didn’t care what you brought there because it was your soul you pawned.

Although there were two picture windows they were both backed by lattice grilles so nothing was visible inside and the door was inset so was shadowed.

On his shoulder Ligeia bobbed and ducked her head. The velvet duster that he had taken from the boy was black so that the only spot of color was the red vinyl gloves and white half domino mask found in its pockets, hung around his calves like the pinion feathers of wings. The boy had called him Crow and with his artist’s sensibility had dressed him like one.

The closer he got to the pawn shop the more powerful that he felt until he was almost drunk on it.

Something in the store was calling him but he could not have described the feeling. The same hooks that had tugged at him outside the boy’s apartment were now pulling him towards the building. Something there wanted him and he had always enjoyed being wanted.

The man behind the counter called out “can’t you read, asshole, we’re closed,” as Peter entered. He was a tall thin man with dark hair and square-rimmed glasses, he had the look of a man who wanted to be David Tennant but just looked like a random TV FBI agent, the sort that milled about in the background and had no lines.

The walls were lined with objects hung from there like the ghosts of dreams, musical instruments shining in the dark room, and even a prosthetic leg showing that the owner had no question about what he bought. There was a pile of old box televisions, all of them switched off, but reflecting Peter better than the domed mirror that was above the counter so that the entire store was visible. The security cameras were off.

“I won’t be long,” Peter told him, walking forward between the glass counters, trailing his fingers along the glass in a plastic squeak.

“Look, freak show,” the owner said, “we’re fucking closed.”

“And?” Peter asked with a smile that he knew belonged to a predator, “you have something of mine and I want it back.”

“And? We’re still closed,” the man continued speaking, muttering under his breath as he rooted around under the counter, “Fucking meth heads.”

Peter jumped up on the counter in a move that surprised even him, but he felt like he was underwater, like gravity was something that happened to other people and not to him. It was a fluid movement and the counter created a little under his weight. “You have a ring,” he told the man, as Harris, according to the sign above the door, finally found what it was that he had been searching for under the counter - a double-barrelled shotgun. “Really?” Peter asked pushing the barrels to the left with his red-gloved hand, “and we were being so friendly.”

Harris brought the gun back with a snap, “get the fuck out, freakshow, don’t make me use this.”

“Give me the ring,” Peter said. He slipped his legs down so that he was sat on the counter, and brought his fist down hard on the counterpane of glass to the left of him so that his hand went through the strengthened glass, “is it this one?” He didn’t even look at it before he threw it at Harris, “No,” he threw a second ring, “no,”  then a third. Ring after ring he threw, pulling them from their bed in the counter among the shards of glass, “No, no, no.” The rings bounced off Harris’ glasses as he sputtered and tried to bring up the shotgun again, but Peter kicked it out of his hands so it landed on the floor away from him.

“You’re making this so much more complicated than it needs to be,” Peter mocked him. He was talking in a sing-song manner, bobbing his head like a clown reciting some funny poem for the children to laugh. “I just want what’s mine, and I know that it's here, so tell me and I'll go, is that so hard to understand?”

Unable to grab the shotgun Harris tugged a revolver out of the display behind him and opened a drawer and with one hand he tried to load the gun, but his hands were shaking and he dropped more bullets than he managed to insert. It was clear that most of his bravado came from the threat of the shotgun. He steadied the revolver with both hands and then fire straight into Peter’s chest.

Peter had thought that being shot point blank in the chest would kill him, as it was the bullet tore through him. He felt like it was a rod of white-hot heat pierced through him and then it was gone, taking the wound with the pain. “Well look at that,” he said as Harris fired again.

And again.

And again.

None of the other bullets were any more successful than the first, and then the gun was empty and Harris continued to pull the trigger despite its empty clicks.

“That didn’t achieve much, now did it, sweetheart?” Peter did not know where his own mockery came from, but he stepped into it like it was a comfortable pair of shoes, “and now you’ve damaged the things behind me,” he affected a tone of mock concern, just to rub the failure in, and then he moved, as quickly and effortlessly as he had jumped up onto the counter to take a piece of the broken glass from the broken counter and drive it into Harris’ forearm. “And there goes your floor,” he said. “And this could have been so painless, we could have been co-operating from the start, but you thought that you were the big man here,” he twisted the blade of glass in his arm, “shows what thought did, doesn’t it?” Under his mask, his smile showed far too many teeth, “why don’t you take a seat and I’ll ask you some questions, a little quid pro quo, you know, one hand tortures the other.”

“Fuck you,” Harris said, Peter backhanded him with his fist, and Ligeia’s “kvach kvach kvach” sound was just like cackling laughter.

“You’re dead, you’re fucking dead,” Harris spat the words through bloody teeth.

Peter quirked up the corner of his mouth into a smirk, “yes,” he said transforming it into a nightmare rictus of death, “I rather suppose that I am. Now about that ring.”

 

Peter had tied Harris to the office chair that he had found in the back room with the same duct tape he used to bind the wound on his arm, and was not as surprised as he might have been at the cruelty that he found inside him and the knowledge that came with it. “If you ever get the opportunity to torture someone you should always start with the hands,” he said. In life Peter had been a lecturer and in death he hadn’t lost the habit, he had just gained knowledge that he hadn’t had before, “For two reasons,” he continued, “all those lovely nerve endings, it makes it so much more efficient, after all it hurts so much,” he used Harris’ own pliers to tug away the nail of his index finger from the nail bed, “and it becomes so much harder to escape when you can’t use your hands.”

“Fucking fuck you, you fucking fuck,” Harris said, trying not to scream.

“Do you feel better for the profanity, Adrian, you are certainly demonstrating the versatility of the word, now are you going to tell me where the ring is or I do have to take another nail?”

“Fuck you.”

A quick jerk pulled the second nail from its bed as easily as the first. Harris yowled like a kicked cat. “Every time you don’t answer me I’m going to pull out a fingernail. So where is the ring?”

Harris spat in Peter’s face, the bloody sputum landed on his cheek and started to slide down before he pulled a cloth handkerchief - another gift from the boy - and wiped his face clean, tucking it back into his inside pocket. “I dropped it in Mount Doom.” Harris smiled through his bloody teeth at his own cleverness.

“You surprise me, Adrian,” Peter said, finger-walking up Harris’ arm to the wound that he had inflicted with the broken glass, and then pushed in the pad of his thumb hard so Harris screamed again, “I wouldn’t think of you as someone who read, now tell me, my poor desperate little Hobbit, where is the ring?”

“Your momma shoved it up her ass.”

 

And so it continued until Harris had no fingernails left on his right hand and the thumbnail missing from the left and finally Harris answered him, “it’s in the safe, it’s in the safe.”

Peter patted him on the cheek, “see how easy it is to be a good boy, Adrian, we could have avoided all of this unpleasantness if you had just asked my question straight away,” Peter crouched down to where the safe was set into the wall and floor and heaved open the safe door, sure that he was now strong enough to pull it free from its moorings, which he now was which terrified Harris, ignoring the papers and other things in there he pulled out a small rosewood jewellery box, which, when he opened it, revealed a spinning ballerina and played a tinkling music box version of Ode to Joy. All of the jewelry inside the box was much more valuable than the usual cheap crap that filled the counters. It was clear that Harris had not intended to sell it.

“Oh my dear, Adrian,” Peter said straddling Harris’ thighs with his own on the office chair, and the box between them. “Are you saving the good pieces for a sweetheart? Isn’t that precious, Ligeia?” With no other audience Peter turned to the crow for confirmation, she bobbed her head as if she was laughing and had perched herself on a mannequin in the window that wore a string of black plastic beads that clattered with her movement. “You should be grateful that I am a crow, not a magpie, or I might take all your shinies away.” From a slit in the velvet lining of the box, he pulled Lydia’s ring and tried to slide it onto his little finger but could only get it as far as the first knuckle. “I am sorry, darling Adrian, but she’s made a liar of me, I said that I would only take the ring, but I’ll have to help myself to something that will hold it, I'll be needing a chain, if you don’t mind."

He surprised Harris in that he did not take the chain from the jewelery box, as Harris himself would have done, just closed and latched the box, shoving it into Harris’ armpit so it would not be lost and took one of the cheap chains from the display, threading the piece of crap chain through the exquisite ring and then pulling it over his head, tucking it under his shirt. “Now the easy part is over,” he said, “let’s talk about where you got the ring, and I’ll call you a cab to take you to the hospital.”

At that Harris reacted as if he had been electrocuted jerking first and then going limp like his strings had been cut. “You’re not going to kill me?” he asked.

Peter patted his cheek, the red vinyl of his glove looked impossibly stark against the man’s pale cheek. “Why would I do that? You weren’t involved were you, Adrian?” Then with a change of tone, the levity falling away from his voice so completely it became threatening and violent, “were you?”

“The Beast,” Adrian blurted the words out so fast that he surprised himself, “The Beast brought me the ring, I didn’t ask where it came from, it’s better not to know. I knew it was better than his usual standard, far better than I usually get, so I put it in my treasure box, I thought if I, if some girl,”

Peter closed his fingers around the ring through his shirt, “I thought so too,” he lifted the phone and, as he had promised that he would, called a cab, then leaving Harris’ treasure box in his armpit, he wheeled the office chair out into the alley out of the back of the pawn shop, and went to step back inside.

“What are you doing? You said,”

“What did I say, Adrian?” Peter asked, turning to look at the man tied to the office chair, “I said you’d call my cab. Now I’m going to do something that should have been done ten years ago, I’m going to burn it all, every last thing responsible for the fire or that profitted from it,” and Harris could tell that Peter’s rage was all-encompassing- It was everyone who had wronged him, who had hurt him or those or loved- he would burn them all to the ground.

 ---

It was raining again, Derek noticed from his office window. It seemed that this October that it would never stop raining. He half wondered if he should commission the building of an ark for the animals, but the thought was distant and far away like it was in a fog.

A lot of his thoughts lately had been like that.

Jennifer kept assuring him that it was just his grief, but when he tried to tell her that then the words came out wrong. In his head, he would tell her how he felt but then he said I suppose you’re right.

Maybe she even was.

His grief for Laura was still fresh and he couldn’t resist poking at it like a bruise.

It was new enough that he kept forgetting that she was gone. He would get his phone to dial her about some part of his day and he’d hear her answer message and just as he was thinking “come on, Law,” he would remember and it was new and vicious again. Or he’d message her a picture or a joke and wonder why it was that she hadn’t replied.

Jennifer told him it was okay to be angry.

Jennifer told him so many things and his head often felt as fuzzy as felt around her, like he was sinking into a dark wine sea, or he was speaking from a great distance away. He felt like Steerpike looking up at the sprawling decay mass of Castle Gormenghast with the same amount of bile and vicious anger, and that reminded him of Laura because she had understood that the book had brought him a comfort that nothing else had, but Jennifer told him that he was past the age for childish things and how could he recover from his grief if he insisted on wallowing in it and fixating on a book for children.

Sometimes Derek did not like Jennifer very much.

But then she was there, bright-eyed and lovely, with her hands like doves and she’d twist her fingers through his hair and let him rest his head on her breast in a facsimile of mother comfort. She’d lead him to the bedroom by the hand and drop her dress like a flag to the floor and instead of a surrender, it felt like a call to war.

She offered him everything and was so kind and sweet and deserving that he didn’t know what he had done to deserve it, and why did he question it? Wasn’t she always there? Wasn’t she beautiful; sexy; kind? Wasn’t she everything a girlfriend was supposed to be?

So why did he question it so?

Maybe she was right and it was just his grief

Or maybe it was the damn rain.

It seemed like it would never stop raining.

There had been a song, he didn’t remember much, just a woman begging for the rain to wash her clean.

Had it been raining the night that Laura had died? She must have felt so alone as she climbed to the roof of the old factory, one of the properties the company owned but couldn’t seem to sell or do anything with so they were just there decaying on the company dime, where she had walked to the edge and jumped. Had she waited? Had she begged for the rain to wash her clean?

He’d spoken to her just that morning and she hadn’t betrayed anything about her intentions. The police said that it was common, in these sorts of cases, that they pretended that everything was fine to make sure that no one tried to stop them, which had the circular problem of reassuring that dark voice inside them that lied to them and told them that no one cared enough to notice or try to stop them - and that even if he had been in Beacon Hills, and not in Boston half a continent away, he couldn’t have stopped her. She would have just hidden it from him too.

But Jennifer had been there with her dove white hands and soft voice and the oases and wells of her body; the folds and the flats; the dimples and rises. She had been there with her pillar box red nails and pastel peach blouses. She had been there with her dark chestnut curls and beady black eyes. She had been there and no one else had been.

He was sure that it was the grief that made it feel like he was thinking through a fog.

Maybe she was right and he had gone back to work too soon.

It wasn’t like the board listened to him anyway.

If he made a suggestion the board split, half telling him that this wasn’t the way Laura would have done it, and the other half telling him it wasn’t what his father would have wanted for the company, and if he mentioned the inconsistencies he saw in the accounts then he was overcome by grief and seeing problems that weren’t there, that this was why he had a board to look after these things for him and then Jennifer was there with her pastel peach blouses that always reminded him of Glinda the good witch.

Laura had always been his Fuschia, his favorite character in his favorite book. For her fifteenth birthday he had brought her a yellow scarf with black birds and tucked inside it was a card upon which he had written the author, Peake’s, description of the girl which had matched Derek’s own sister as well. “ _A girl of about fifteen with long, rather wild black hair. She was gauche in movement and in a sense ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have become beautiful. Her sullen mouth was full and rich -- her eyes smoldered. A yellow scarf hung loosely around her neck_ ,” and with every year the card contained another quotation about the girl.

Yet when Laura died, no, he corrected himself, when Laura killed herself, she hadn’t been wearing that yellow scarf - she had just left it folded up on the next day’s clothing on the chair of her vanity table.

The police were right. They knew their jobs. If they said that it was a suicide then it was a suicide. Derek just missed her, that was all. He was seeing crimes where there were none. He was looking for someone, anyone, to blame.

The rain was persistent, it was painting the city in darkness, slicking the sidewalks with shine and making the few people braving the weather huddle under their umbrellas.

Derek felt more alone than he had in a long time. 

It was getting late and he wasn’t sure how long he had been stood at his office window. He loosened his tie, then pulled it off, dropping it on the chair beside him; he felt strangled by it all of a sudden. He should ask his secretary, who had been Laura’s before him, to call him a car, but he made the snap decision to walk home. It was a cold autumn evening, with only two more days until November and winter proper, but he wanted the fresh air. The air in his office felt heavy, hot and dry.

A walk would clear his head. It would help chase away the fog that was making it so hard to think.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had walked for the simple joy of walking. He took a car from his apartment to the office, from the office to the gym, and back to his apartment again.

A walk would do him good, he thought, it would help clear his head.

 ---

Sebastien Valet was known as the beast of Beacon Hills. He was a combination of knives and Gallic charm. He had prowled the streets of Beacon Hills as apex predator for over a decade, feared and considered untouchable. The police had never investigated him and those that crossed him were found dead, carved up like a country ham.

Peter found him because of two things, the picture in the sketchbook which was a better likeness than Peter had thought, and the crow. She had flown over the city whilst he lurked on rooftops under a gargoyle to keep the worst of the persistent rain off of him.

Seeing through the crow’s eyes was nauseating. Her vision was so much better than his own. He became aware of colors that he could not have comprehended with human eyes, oranges and golds flared like fluorescents and the vision swirled almost like he was looking long distance through a spinning fisheye lens. He wondered if he could eat, his stomach felt uncomfortably full at all times, that he would have vomited at the view that he saw, the swirling rolling visions of color and rain and movement until she found the Beast.

Sebastien Valet was a handsome man, swarthy and narrow-eyed with a jaw that could square wardrobes and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He was wearing a grey marl Walmart hoodie under a black suede coat with jeans and a plain blue tea. When Ligeia found him he was in a doorway hunched over a what was clearly a prostitute with heavy blonde curls and tight hotpants over torn nylon hold-ups with high heeled boots. He was holding a straight razor just below her ear and she was offering him a handful of bills. Through Ligeia’s eyes, he could see the fear in her face in such color that he could taste it on his tongue.

He followed Valet using the flat rooftops of the industrial buildings, ducking air-conditioning boxes and skylight as he ran. It was a movement he could not have managed before, fast and elegant with no fear of falling or missing his mark - he felt like he had wings and that made him fast.

 

Peter met Sebastien Valet in an alleyway between a pair of dumpsters, the lids of which were open, and the stink of them was almost visceral, he was aware of the rats and cockroaches, their sounds rustling the overflowing trash bags, and the bricks were slick with more than just rain, and Peter’s appearance stopped Valet in his tracks.

 _“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive.”_ Peter said from the shadows in the alley’s mouth.  _“I call That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will’t please you sit and look at her?”_

Peter took Valet’s thrown knife in his shoulder and rocked back from the impact.

He clapped his hands together, catching the second blade between his palms. _“I said “Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance,”_

Valet rushed him with a roar, slamming him into the wall but instead of being winded he laughed, continuing with the poem, his laughter changing the words. _“But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)”_ They were face to face, close enough that Peter could feel his hot breath on his face, and smell the aniseed on his breath from whatever he had been drinking, “recognise me, Beast?” Peter asked him.

At that Valet paused and the colour ran from his face like someone had tipped a jug, and his perpetual smirk faltered, “ _tu es mort, tu es mort,_ _je t'ai tué_ _._ _je t'ai tué_ _._ _je t'ai regardé brûler_ _,_ _je t'ai tué._ ”

“I’d love to say that rumours of my death were exaggerated,” Peter said with a smile, “ _mais, ma petit_ _chardonneret_ _, je suis mort, et je suis venu pour toi._ _Ne sommes-nous pas tous des victimes à la fin_ _, et la mort vient pour nous tous,_ _tôt ou tard_ _._ _Tu as tué ma femme et ma famille, et tu as ri, tu pensais vraiment que je te laisserais vivre après ça?_

 

\----

 

Derek paused at the doors of the Hale building and just breathed, his breath making steamy puffs in the cold autumn night. He felt like there was a thread that was pulling at his sternum, tugging him down and into the rain and the dark, and also he felt so very overwhelmed and tired like the dark was a weight bearing him down.

The young man surprised him when he stepped out of the dark into the puddle of light from the glass doors behind Derek to ask him “are you okay?” it was so out of nowhere that it was as if the young man had appeared by magic. “You look…”

The man was fae, almost ethereal, with a buzzcut and eyes the escaping light made look like golden candy wrappers. He gave Derek the immediate image of Titus Groan, the lead character of Derek’s favorite novel, with whom he shared an aptness to have his energy sapped by more the excess of his imagination than of his body, with the peach skin of the Countess and dark hair of Lord Sepulchre.

The character had always represented a yearning for freedom to Derek and this boy shared it like he strove for a freedom that Derek could only witness and not comprehend in any way. He had a strange fantastical creature tattooed into the skin behind one ear, even with the rain and dark it was a brilliant lilac color and looked like a miniature cross between an elephant and a tapir.

The young man wore a solid black under a scruffy fur fleece jacket with a hood that was falling away from his face and the bruises there. His left hand was in a black plaster cast with a pink tape design on it but Derek couldn’t say what the design was.

“What?” Derek asked. Perhaps he had been in Brooklyn too long but he was very unused to strangers approaching him at all - least of all to ask him how he was.

“You look,” the boy stopped again, looking for the word, “like you just got fired.” He raised his right hand and scratched at the earrings that surrounded the shell of his ear, flashing a tattoo on his forearm. It was just enough of a glimpse to tantalize Derek who found himself wanting to see it properly, “and that you really need a drink, there’s a great place around the corner.”

Was this kid hitting on him? Derek wondered, at least then Derek knew where he stood. “I’ve got a girlfriend,” he blurted out, surprising himself because his tongue felt like lead in his mouth and part of him really wanted to join the boy and just throw away his responsibilities for the night.

“Bring her too,” the boy said with a smile like someone had struck a match and caused a room to flare into light, “call her and invite her along, I’ve had a shitty day,” Derek didn’t know how such a creature could suffer something so banal as a shitty day when he looked like he would be more at home roaming the halls of vast, crumbling castle discovering secrets that neglect had forgotten, “You’ve had a shitty day,” he continued, “we should commiserate over cocktails.” He scratched at his ear again, the cuff of his black-furred sleeve falling down to show his surprisingly strong male wrist and the tattoo there.

It was an image Derek knew well, Alice lying in the grass waiting for her sister from the Mervyn Peake illustrations of Alice in Wonderland, a book that his uncle had given him because he had loved Gormenghast so fiercely. His uncle, Peter, had loved books and reading and he did everything to encourage that in his nieces and nephews so if they showed interest in one book they’d find others by the same author appear on their shelves, and when he gave Derek Gormenghast he had known that he would love it and that in falling in love with it he could be lured into other books, because the author was as talented an illustrator as he was a writer, and just as surreal, and the boy had Alice, Peake’s Alice, tattooed on his arm.

“Actually,” Derek said, “cocktails sound wonderful, I’m Derek,” he offered out his hand for the boy to shake.

“Stiles,” the boy answered, taking Derek's hand and pumping it, “everyone just calls me Stiles.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> normally Stiles is the asshole and likes to twist what i'm planning  
> but no, this time it's Derek, because Derek decided his favorite book, the one he's clinging to in his grief, is one that I absolutely hate - so thanks for that Derek.
> 
> if anyone wants to fix my French please do - full credit given
> 
> the picture of Alice Stiles has on his forearm is here  
> https://www.carleton.edu/departments/ENGL/Alice/Artistpeake.html


	4. Chapter 4

Derek still wasn’t sure why he had followed the boy to the bar, but before he could understand it he was in a booth on a weeknight, the boy, Stiles, had flashed his ID to the bartender and came back with two glasses and a jug of something bright orange and fizzy.

Derek didn’t want to be that guy who had followed the white rabbit because it was so cliche, but he had. His rabbit was an illustration of Alice and now that he had pulled off his oversized jacket to reveal a pair of muscular arms covered in tattoos and a slim fit black t shirt that read I heart boys on the front and “with other boys” on the back with an anime image of two men in bed. He sat down in a sprawl with a squeak as he shifted across the leather bench. “Shall I play mother?” he asked. Derek was mesmerized by the white fox on his biceps and the way that it looked like it was going to move, running through the stylised wisps of smoke down his feet. “It’s just a mango-peach sangria, I figured that we shouldn’t go straight to spirits, enough spirits and I damn well need an exorcism, head turning and you have to peel me off the ceiling, he had a quicksilver grin that brought out the colours of the bruises on his eyes, and carved deep into his face, transforming boyish beauty into something more handsome, and tugged up a mole on his cheek that Derek couldn’t really look away.

Derek opened his mouth to speak but the words were gone, and Stiles carried on talking, “it’s such a cliche but bourbon makes me ornery, tequila means I’ll pick a fight with anything that stays still long enough to meet my gaze - like the wallpaper,” he winked, “and gin means that I’m sat on the stairs with my mascara running down my cheeks as I cry about the fact that gin tastes like soap.”

Derek laughed despite himself, a noise that he hadn’t felt that he was capable of anymore and it turned into half a sob and although he felt he had chosen to say something else he said, “my sister died.”

Stiles transformed again, he leaned over the table and took Derek’s hand between his own. His hands were so adult despite that he looked so young. He was a bare handful of years younger than Derek, but Laura had always said that Derek had been born looking thirty-five. He’d never been the same kind of slim beauty, neither had Laura who had been built like an Amazon, and he’d never had the same exuberance that Stiles had. It was so easy for a stranger to offer him comfort. “I am so sorry to hear that,” and what surprised him was that it was the first time anyone had said that to him.

“If you want I think that I have some tissues here,” Stiles started to root around in his pockets, pushing his hips forward to give himself more room, as he pulled things out: a cellphone with a case with cat ears, a pack of cards held together with a rubber band, and then a half-empty pack of tissues in a Disney princess wrapper. “Are you sure you should be,” he gestured with his cast at the bar, “but I’m starting to regret not skipping straight to spirits, do you want to go home? I’ve got my phone, I can call you a cab.”

“No,” Derek said, surprising himself with his vehemence, “that’s the very last thing that I want to do right now.” It was true, he did not want to be alone right now.

Stiles, reached back over to squeeze Derek’s hand, “shall I call your girlfriend- if this is about cocktails, we could do anything you want. It’s all about you,” he was earnest, “we can go dancing, we can eat, we can do karaoke, we can even hit the movies, we can call anyone you want and we’ll make a night of it.”

Derek entertained the thought of calling Jennifer and for some reason the very thought of her made him feel nauseous and grimy so he took a large swallow of the sangria which was cloying with the mango, but the sparkling white wine cleaned the palate after, with the peach marrying the two. It was not the sort of drink that he would choose on his own but he liked it more than he thought that he would. 

He had often felt much older than his twenty-nine years, and as one of the Hale heirs when he was in college he was expected to drink beer with the other guys with bourbon chasers. He had fallen into the expectations of who he should be. He’d found it easier to be who they thought that he was instead of who he actually was or who he wanted to be.

And yet this stranger, this kid, didn’t seem to care about that and the sudden ability to be himself left him unmoored and he thought that he would feel scared but he didn’t, he had no reason for it but Stiles made him feel safe. He had been without the feeling so long that he had not noticed the lack, but their sudden return made him more drunk than the wine. “I actually want to stay here,” Derek told him, “but I have to ask don’t you have a girlfriend you’d rather spend time with?” Stiles shook his head with a smile, “not a boyfriend, either.”

“Is it because of,” he made a move with his head.

“Oh this,” Stiles made a circle of his face with his cast, “yeah, no,” he grinned, which pulled at the band aid over his nose, “I’m terribly abused,” his tone was heavily sarcastic, “I am deeply wounded and shall never get over the injuries I got tripping over my cat and headbutting my couch. I’m like a baby giraffe on the best of days, the only surprise was that it wasn’t my own feet that I tripped over,” Derek tried to swallow his laugh, “oh, that isn’t the whole of it, so I’m covered in gold ink and blood, I had to wrap my arm in frozen peas - in an oven mitt because I could not find a towel, and I had to get my neighbour to drive me. Now, my neighbour, Mrs Memetovic, is eighty five, so it’s like eleven at night and she’s squinting at me through the peephole, but she’s blind as fuck, so she has to open the door on the chain to this rain soaked bloody nightmare, every time I open my mouth this torrent of blood come out and I try to say Mrs Memetovic it comes out Mithith Memetovith, and she says, and I am speaking one hundred percent truth here, oh Stiles, I’ll go get the iodine.”

Derek damn near sprayed Stiles with sangria.

“I wish that was the funny bit, so she drives me to the hospital in my jeep and she’s as blind as Mr Magoo, so she’s perched at the edge of the front seat with her face as close to the windshield as she can get, and we go to the hospital and they think that we’re there for her. I’m covered in blood, looking like a sparkly Andrew WK,” Derek did not understand the reference but he didn’t stop Stiles talking. “I’ve got my hand in an elbow length oven mitt filled with frozen peas, my nose is broken and I’m spitting blood every time I open my mouth, but they think that I’ve brought her in, and because she’s a tiny little dictator in milk bottle glasses she’s like “are you blind or just stupid? I am nowhere near old enough to need your help. What am I paying taxes for? To be treated like an invalid?”

Derek was chuckling away at the story, he couldn’t help that the story was funny but Stiles didn’t take it personally at all.

“So, I finally get treated and they keep asking me what happened and I keep telling them but they clearly don’t believe me, the nurse asks me if she, she gestures at Mrs Memetovic, hitting you. Now Mrs Memetovic looks like Augrah from the Dark Crystal, most of her weight is piled on shawls and milk bottle glasses, and they go from trying to treat her to trying to call the cops on her for beating on me, and I had to speak to the hospital social worker, and I was trying to explain that even though I’m bi Mrs Memetovic is still devoted to her wife who died way back in the eighties. She’s this ancient lesbian who hates people but they’ve convinced themselves that she’s beating me like she’s ever beaten anything other than an egg. I mean I love her but not like that, but I’m in there so long she comes barging in, walking stick first, ready to fuck up shit because she’s got to drive me home and she’s convinced her ti-vo only holds recordings for an hour so she wants to get back before she loses her show, but of course what she says is “If I don’t get to see my Miss Viola Imma need to know how to get away with murder.”

Derek didn’t spit only because he knew that he was going to laugh and didn’t drink whilst he waited on the punchline that he’d know was worth it. “Her Miss Viola?” Derek asked with a laugh.

“Yep, her Miss Viola, she knocked on my door and is, Stiles we are going to see that Virgin Suicides movie because my Miss Viola is finally in a film with that lovely Will Smith and then talked throughout the whole movie about Harley Quinn’s legs and how back in her day she’d had legs like that and how she loved a pair of fishnets on a pretty girl, but she's slapped my arm and tells me to be quiet because her Miss Viola is on screen.”

The more Derek laughed the lighter that he felt and it was clear that he was playing the clown to make Derek laugh, he had the suggestion that he knew about grief and he was trying to distract Derek from it. “Why gold ink?” Derek asked him.

“Oh, didn’t I say? I’m an artist, I work primarily with tarot cards, I do surreal horror canvasses as well, you’d be surprised how well prints of those sell. I got this commission from Mayor Argent, he offered me an obscene amount of money to put a room wide mural of rustic France in his dining room and I was, umm, you do know that I paint monsters in my landscapes, so I gave him a list of artists that could help him. I might have taken it if he wasn’t true evil, but Danny,” he paused that Derek did not know who that was, “Danny Mahaelani, he’s another local artist, well, he turned him down too, you know that someone is evil when not one but two struggling artists turn you down because artists are broke and rarely have any morals when money is concerned. But the two of us got together and you know that mural at the playground over on Maple?”

“The one with the dragon and the girl on a unicorn with a sword and shield, you did that?” Derek was surprised because he had pointed out the mural to Jennifer more than once and had said how much he liked it. She had been dismissive. Jennifer didn't care for art, she cared for the price tags.

“Yeah and Argent was furious,” Stiles continued, “but the local paper and news picked it up with support for it, it took like a week of working at night to get it done. I mean you can’t just show up to a kid’s playground during the day can you, would you get arrested for vandalism of public property or hanging around at a kid’s park when you have no kids yourself. It doesn’t take much to terrify the mommies, so I did the castle and the dragon and Danny did the princess and the unicorn, you get two surreal artists together and at least one princess will appear.”

The more Stiles talked the more natural Derek felt, like the fog that had overwhelmed him was clearing, and for as much as Stiles talked, and he was happy to, he was clever in revealing next to nothing about himself even when he was the topic of conversation. But Derek felt that he knew Stiles in the sort of old-fashioned way of having known someone your whole life. It was like pulling on a pair of pants that were long past the point of being worn out, so that even a thrift store would use them for rags, where the ass was out of them but the seams were stretched just right, so it felt like coming home when the heating was on but the weather outside was cold and wet and you didn’t need to go out again.

He could listen to Stiles talk about anything and for the entirety of their conversation he only thought about Jennifer when Stiles reminded him that she even existed, and even that was freeing, and the weight taken off his shoulders was heady. Derek wanted nothing more than to continue that feeling forever.

 ---

As he had hung, crucified on Argent’s gubernatorial billboard Sebastien Valet had become loquacious. Whilst Peter used his blood to paint a crow across Argent’s smug face Valet started to talk and he was happy to spit out answers with the blood. He took his dying as an opportunity for a final confession and started talking about the prostitutes he pimped, the people that he murdered and the drugs that he had peddled. That might have been the reason that Peter chose to finish him, pushing Valet’s own knives into his organs one by one, even after he’d gone silent.

Peter understood the reasoning. If Valet was going down he was taking everyone that he could down with him. He talked about Kate - he didn’t know her last name because it didn’t matter, she was Kate and everyone knew that, and that she wasn’t to be fucked with.

He talked about Nolan who was a hanger-on and would do anything for Kate but was dead behind the eyes and had a smile that made even Valet’s blood run cold.

He talked about Brunski who was the chemist that cut the drugs that Valet peddled, it was something unique that Kate called a “silver bullet” but on the street they just called it silver because it pissed off the mayor and was very much a spit in the face of his just say no to drugs campaign.

He said that they had a mysterious backer but he neither knew nor cared who it was. All that he knew was that he didn’t need to worry about the police and that he could do what wanted as long as he kept the money rolling in, and he could pawn any of the extra for himself.

It gave Peter names for the people in the sketchbook and reinforced what he had seen, that someone had targeted his sister or her husband. Someone had sent the four of them and had either paid for or commanded their murder, and for ten years they had benefitted from it whilst eight people, two of which were literal babies, lay in their graves.

 He would do more than just kill them, he’d tear their whole kingdom down, burn their institutions to the ground and salt their ashes and the anger inside him was cold and inexorable - it was determined to make them suffer and know what it was what they had done and why they were being punished for it.

 

\---

 

The crow, Ligeia, found Brunski walking through one of the less affluent parts of town, because of the late hour and the weather the streets were empty apart from a few kids huddled together in a doorway as they passed around a cigarette. Peter found himself nauseated at Ligeia’s roiling twisting viewpoints with its garishly loud colours and the juddering slaps of her wingbeats. Movement distracted her so now and again she fixated on a cat or a stray dog or the burning end of the cigarette that flared with their inhalations to show the haggard faces of the kids.

Brunski wore an anorak with fur trimmed hood pulled up to protect him from the rain and Ligeia only caught sight of him when the wind caught and tugged back the hood for a moment letting the light fall on his face before he tugged it back up, suggesting that even serendipity was on Peter’s side.

He was surprised at how far Beacon Hills had fallen in the years since he had died. His sister, Talia, and her husband, William, had given their lives to the city, Talia as its mayor and William through his company, they had supported anything that they felt helped the city and it showed. Whilst they were alive the streets and schools were well maintained and the idea of homeless kids huddling in a doorway was unthinkable because she had put so much funding into support for them. The city had buzzed with industry, providing jobs and security to the residents, but now most of those industrial buildings were empty and abandoned, and areas that had once been proud of their identity, if maybe not as affluent as some of them were, now felt dangerous in a way that they never had before. Windows were boarded up, iron railings lined the sidewalk to protect ground floor windows and doors, and some of the streetlights were busted. It looked like pictures of New York in the early 1980s when corruption had siphoned away everything from public works that they could.

Peter had always liked driving down to Beacon Hills, it felt like an old Hollywood idea sort of town, where the neighbours knew your name and were happy to see you, and that a generations-long blood feuds would be started over the difference between marigolds and zinnias in your window box. He had always loved teasing Talia about it whilst she laughed at his big city ways. It had lost its small-town charm and it was indistinguishable from any other dying town in America. Those places that had been unique in life were identical in their death throes.

Peter made note of the building that Brunski went into as his vision switched back from what Ligeia could see to what was before him. It was quite a distance from where he had dealt with Valet but he didn’t mind the walk. With his mask peeled off no one gave him a second glance. He considered stealing a car but talked himself out of it with two basic facts - that he did not want to punish anyone not involved with the fire by stealing their car, and that he did not know how to steal a car or at least how to start it once he got inside.

He had been an English professor before the fire, if he needed a car he either used his own or booked a taxi, he was not the sort of person who had ever thought of illegality and yet he was murdering his way across the city and the irony was not eluding him.

 

Brunski’s building was one of those that had been built at the turn of the century before the first world war as housing for one family but had, at some point in its life, been converted into apartments with one on each floor and all the buildings that shared its block were in a similar state of decay. Despite the late hour only Brunski’s building even had a light in the window.

Peter scaled the building at the end of the block to get to the roof which he crossed as nimbly as a cat. At some point in the building’s history someone had built a coop for pigeons or ferrets and it gave Peter momentary shelter from the rain. On the last part of the block was an old roof mounted water tower with a railing and broken ladder, with the rain pouring off it in sheets, Peter noticed it in passing before he entered the building through an open third-story window.

\---

Noah Stilinski got the call about Valet when his book was just getting good. He was the cruiser closest to the incident so he answered the radio as he stuffed a receipt between the pages and belting himself back in, starting the car to answer the call.

With Ninth closed he had to take a route around but was still the first officer on scene and so it became a his responsibility to secure it whilst letting dispatch know that it was a murder and that the coroner’s office needed to bring a big ladder.

Sebastien Valet hung in a Jesus Christ pose across Mayor Argent’s electoral poster and someone had not only dragged him up there and pinned him in place with what looked like his own knives they had painted a bird around him with something dark and dripping which seemed to be blood.

The bird looked like a crow.

Noah couldn’t say why but the image made him think of the dream that Stiles had told him about in Finstock’s diner, of the man who turned into crows.

He knew perfectly well that Stiles was not responsible, and in the back of his head he could see his son complaining about blood as an art medium even if it wasn’t so very extra. If Stiles had done it, assuming that he could get a man with at least fifty pounds on him - which he knew that he absolutely could not - he would have used black spray paint and put devil horns on Argent whilst he was up there.

Stiles was not, could not be, responsible, but his intuition was uncanny. He could not have known about the crow but he had somehow predicted it.

Noah shook the idea out of his head.

It was a coincidence and nothing more.

\---

Brunski’s lab only fit the description of the word by a very slim margin. There was a wall knocked through from what had most likely been a bedroom, laid out with dirty worktables covered in sheet plastic, to a mildewed bathroom with dark green tiles and a gross bathtub with a ring of rust where water had lain for years. Luckily the lid of the toilet remained closed and it kept its horrors secret.

The tables were draped with thick plastic sheeting upon which were full of some sort of syrupy liquid and cheap plastic pipettes over sheets of rice paper that hung on lines about the room. There were piles of empty plastic bottles of distilled water and agave syrup that he used to thin the solution and make it more palatable to its users.

It was clear that he altered the way that the drug was taken as he thinned it, changing it from what he guessed was eye drops into a tab of it could be placed under the tongue. By using sheets of rice paper they could even use it as a patch against the skin, and meant that those selling the tabs could drop them in a puddle or down a drain to destroy the evidence entirely.

Peter found a metal syringe on the table, one that Brunski used to put measures into small dark brown glass bottles with rubber tipped droppers so drops of the drug could be put directly into the eyes in a more concentrated dose. Peter put the syringe into one of the brown glass bottles and drew it all up, capped the needle and slipped it into the inside pocket of his coat before he went down to the apartment that Brunski used as his own, and the door of which he had left unlocked.

Time, not neglect, had taken its toll on the apartment which although clean and well maintained it had not been decorated in some time, the floral wallpaper was white with blowsy pink roses was stained by years of touching hands and nicotine. The carpet, which was a loud brown and black floral pattern that did not match the wallpaper, was worn thin by years of constant wear but was recently vacuumed. An old green flock armchair was covered by an antimacassar with old stains on it but a state of the art television hung from the wall showing a Behind the Music program on Captain and Tennille as Brunski fussed about in his kitchen unaware that he was not alone. He was making what sounded like coffee with the running water and rustling noises that Peter could hear, and the room smelled warm and soft with fresh coffee.

Brunski had hung his army green anorak by the door over a nearly empty shoe rack and beside a leather satchel with a crossbody strap. Peter had no idea what it was that had pulled Brunski from the apartment and into the rain but seeing the satchel Peter suspected that he was making a delivery to the person that sold the drugs and managed the money.

Valet had said that he used the drug, Silver, for both controlling his whores and distributing it through the street kids for sales coverage throughout the city, but wasn't near stupid enough to take it. He was adamant that there were other methods of distribution but that he hadn’t cared enough to learn what they were.

Peter walked through the apartment with no care or worry because the old furniture was mostly pushed out of the way so there was nothing to impede his progress, the only thing that could have alerted Brunski was a recycling crate next to the armchair full of empty bottles of IPA.

Peter stepped in behind him, put his forearm across his throat and pulled him in tight, not saying a word as he choked him into unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm about half a day behind because I had to cut over 1k because the story stalled and needed reworking which changed the timeline so I had to scrabble to fix that and then got a migraine and a half and lost a whole day to that, so instead of 1700 words a day i had to get 5k out today, so teensy bit behind and very very knackered  
> but yep, they found the beast's body, Derek is falling in love with Stiles and Peter is about to kill Brunski  
> it seemed a lot more when I was writing it -- am so tired, but enjoy


	5. Chapter 5

The bar was bustling and people milled about, carrying drinks and laughing, they paid no attention to Stiles and Derek sitting in the booth, laughing and leaning into each other as the room got louder.

“What are the cards?” Derek asked, tapping on the deck of cards on the table with two of his fingertips.

“Oh, they're tarot,” Stiles answered, “I paint them most often, I’m an artist, I did tell you that, right?” Derek nodded for Stiles had. "So I carry a deck around with me in case inspiration strikes, or I get bored in a bar and I can play solitaire."

“Why tarot?” Derek asked him.

Stiles lifted the deck, he pulled off the rubber band and turned the first card holding it between two fingers. It was a devil on a black background and it proudle held twin chains attached to the collars of two naked figures, both standing proud at the devil’s feet. “Lots of reasons,” he said, turning the card back and forth with his fingertips in a simple card trick, “most people misunderstand the cards, A card,” the devil flickered into view in his hands and then was gone, just as quickly, “has no power. It’s just a picture painted on a piece of card, but the image painted on it has to include certain things. This card is recognisable by the monster upon it certainly, but it’s Jack and Jill here,” he turned the card to reveal the face again and tapped his finger on the naked figures of a man and a woman, “that matter. You see this card represents predestination.”

Derek couldn’t help but flinch at the word and could not have said why it was that it was so.

“So in the hands of a reader they watch the person they are doing the reading for, predestination is a strange thing precisely because it is the future, a future that is set,” he clicked his tongue on the final syllable, “but even if it’s a future that is written in stone, stones can be broken.”

And with that phrase a weight lifted off Derek's shoulders, this was why he had followed Stiles, this Titus Groan searching for a way out of a predestined future, but it looked like the demon’s eyes on the card were burning stars painted as they were with gold.

“But predestination means so many different things to so many different people. If I was doing a reading, and I hate doing readings by the way, I’m an artist not the Oracle of bloody Delphi, but I’d tailor it for the person I’m doing the reading for. So if you were, say, a pretty girl fussing with her rings I’d suggest that she might be getting married, and the predestination only means the future that spread out before them, her new life with her new husband; to a teenager it can represent college, or it can be a new job. The devil is the opposite of choice. The church believes that God represents choice because you have to choose him, so the devil represents the absence of choice. So the Devil card,” he put it down on the table with a slap, “is a warning that you stand on a precipice but that you can choose to follow the path or not.”

He turned another card, placing it down upon the first. The image was a burning tower with people leaping to their deaths from the precipice. “Hubris.” A third card was turned and placed down showing a figure in motley playing a pipe and about to walk straight over the edge of a cliff, “blithe ignorance.” The next card was a banded heart pierced by three swords, “heartbreak.”

“Stop,” Derek said.

“They’re just cards,” Stiles said, patting Derek’s hand to reassure him, “they mean whatever you want them to mean,” he picked up the cards, putting the back in the deck, “you can do it with anything really, it’s not quite charlatanism, it’s,” he stopped, his fox’s grin slid up his face, “it’s knowing how to read a person and recognising what those symbols mean, but why tarot?” he took a large swallow of his sangria, emptying the glass, “I like the pictures and people are willing to pay a lot of money for them, I can design one deck and reproduce them as many times as people want them to be reproduced, I have one design mass produced for sale on Amazon. I like the rules of them and bending them. If you draw a devil card you don’t need to draw the monster but you do need to draw the chains. It gives me a structure to work with, naturally my mind is all over the place. It flits about like a butterfly but it means that I have to include details. I like the contradiction of the freedom of doing what I want but having rules that I have to follow, and because there are a set amount of cards I can’t just sit and procrastinate.”

“You don’t seem like the type to procrastinate,” Derek told him, pouring more of the cocktail into Stiles’ glass, and almost filling it to the brim.

“Derek Hale, are you trying to get me drunk?” There was that vulpine grin again, “and I thought that you had a girlfriend,” he lifted the full glass and then sat back into the corner of the booth. The glass was shaped like a cross between a wine goblet and a brandy snifter, a large bowl on a stem with a bubble before the base, but Stiles cupped it in both hands, he was laughing and his eyes sparkled with mischief in the bar’s light. He was sat directly underneath one of the bar’s downlighters which almost haloed him in warm golden light.

“I don’t know, are you flirting with me?” Derek answered smiling back, he felt light and was enjoying the evening with Stiles, it was comfortable and warm and easy in a way that things had not been for a long time, certainly since he had come back to Beacon Hills.

“Do you want me to?” he crossed his legs and leaned back into the corner with one arm above the leather cushion, it meant that he was sprawled in a pose that highlighted his slim waist and hips.

“Sat like that I wonder if I shouldn’t draw you like one of your French girls, Jack?”

This time it was Stiles’ turn to spray sangria everywhere as he laughed, and Derek wanted him to laugh forever.

 

\---

 

Peter perched on the lip of the water tower, careful to keep his feet out of the water where he was sat like a gargoyle or some other mythical beast. The water in the tank was no deeper than two thirds, so the edge was too high for someone who was treading water inside to grab but the water deep enough that someone could not stand with their face above the water, and the ladder that should have been on the inside had fallen away into the water years before.

Brunski was uselessly treading water. “I don’t know you,” he spat, “and I know all of Kate’s people.” He had said it before Peter tipped him into the water. Because of his latex gloves Peter had found the wet metal too slippery to climb so he had tugged them free with his teeth at the edge of every finger and in touching Brunski he learned why the boy had given him gloves.

As he carried Brunski up the ladder to the water tower he had swallowed Brunski’s skin through touch, and if he had not been unconscious then Brunski might have used the moment where it overwhelmed Peter to break free.

In that moment, crashing into him like a comet, he saw every crime that Brunski had committed, but his own macabre need meant that he sought out Brunski’s memories of the fire amongst the horrors. He swallowed down the grotesque fascination the man had had, the sexual pleasure he had found in Lydia’s flesh against her will, and the smell of smoke and cooking meat, the burning in his nostrils from the hot air, and the resentment he felt for Kate who laughed and the way her laughter lingered long after the smell of smoke was gone from his clothes.

Peter felt all of it.

Peter had suspected but had not known for certain that they had raped Lydia before they murdered her, but now he knew for certain, and he saw her pain and her fear and he saw that Brunski liked it, and the girls that came after and their pain and their fear and the rage that Peter had expected to boil and burn grew into a spreading coldness within him.

He threw Brunski into the water tower with a splash through the small opening in its roof. “I don’t know you, and I know all of Kate’s people” Brunski said. He had mistakenly believed that he would know the person that came for him, because he knew that someone would come for him. “Did Victoria send you? I didn’t short her,” he spat out a mouthful of water which he had taken in as he spoke, “I paid my dues, you can tell her that.”

Peter just let him struggle. He perched like a crow on the lip of the water tower and watched Brunski tread water.

“If you think this scares me then you’re mistaken, I’m made of tougher stuff than this, you can tell both Kate and Victoria that they can go fuck themselves. I didn’t short them. If they want more I have to cut the Silver more, and if the balance is coming up short then it’s because of Valet’s whores, what do you expect when he beats obedience out of them.”

Peter just sat and watched him tread water.

“If they think that they can get rid of me,” he threatened.

Peter finally answered him. “I don’t know who those people are, Brunski,” he said, “nor do I work for your mysterious supplier, your Chemist,” he climbed back onto the ladder and stepped down so that only his head and shoulders were above the edge of the tub, “you were part of the group that killed my family before you raped and murdered my wife.” Brunski’s expression turned from righteous anger to dawning horror, “that is why you are going to die here, alone and screaming. Goodbye, Mr Brunski,” he said, “hopefully you can take some comfort in the fact that when I’m done then everyone who was part of the fire at the Hale house will join you in Hell.”

 

\---

 

Derek’s apartment was on the top floor of one of the oldest buildings in Beacon Hills, it was one of the first stone buildings and had been built and decorated in the gothic style, and as such, was covered in unnecessary flourishes such as gables and porthole windows, and even a few gargoyles attached to the gutters so the constant rain made it look like they were vomiting endless streams of water from their screaming mouths. It was a building with a white stone facade that looked like it belonged on the east coast and not North California. Stiles had recognised the buildings because they were the city’s aspirational neighbourhood and he had always believed it was the sort of place that the Addam’s family would live.

Derek led him up the front stairs and to the front door which he unlocked showing a small vestibule and an old elevator, “are you sure that you’re okay with this?” he asked, “I just don’t want to be alone right now.”

“I feel you,” Stiles said, “I’ve got nothing else planned for the evening, maybe we can Netflix and chill, I can introduce you to the joys of sitting on the couch and watching nonsense just because it’s surprisingly difficult, it’s not something people can just do, you have to learn how.”

“I haven’t got Netflix,” Derek said, pulling the elevator gate closed behind them. It was one of those bronze grate elevators that was covered in red carpet that were in old movies, and the only thing lacking was a bellhop in a pillbox cap with a gold chin strap. “I have Starz,” he finished, “but I rarely get the time to watch anything.”

“Dude,” Stiles said, “that means Black Sails, I was just going to torrent it, it has the hottest pirates,” he reached out and put his hand on Derek’s arm, “I know Netflix and chill usually means sex but we can Starz and frozen pizza.”

“If we’re going to have pizza we’re ordering in,” Derek answered calmly, “but how hot are these pirates?”

Stiles laugh exploded out of him, his entire body moved by it - his mouth open, his broken hand pressed to his sternum so it tugged up his black t shirt revealing a line of dark hair on his soft stomach. Derek felt an overwhelming hunger and in a moment, one that he could not quite explain, he had stepped into Stiles’ orbit and pressed up against him, Stiles lips were soft and cold against his own because of the winter rain, and the slight dip of his waist felt natural in his hands, and the dampness of their clothes felt hot and steamy in the close confines of the creaking elevator which felt almost humid. Derek leaned into the kiss, slipping his tongue into Stiles’ mouth to taste the peach and mango sangria that they had been drinking earlier.

Stiles tried to step back but then turned his head, “Derek,” he turned his face so that Derek’s mouth was against his cheek and the triangle of moles there, as he nuzzled the tip of his nose against the skin, just breathing him in, “we can’t,” he protested, “you have a girlfriend.”

Although it was not a no it was a reason for them to stop. Derek had forgotten all about Jennifer. In that moment, in that elevator as it created and juddered around them, it was as if she had not existed.

Derek stepped back, but he didn’t take his hand from Stiles’ waist. “I’m sorry,” the words were automatic but he still said them.

“You don’t need to apologise,” Stiles told him, and squeezed Derek’s fingers the way he had in the bar to reassure him, “you forgot, you have so many things on your mind, it’s okay,” he pressed his forehead against Derek’s so that their breath was mingled in a steamy pocket between their faces, he raised his good hand, “it’s just a bad time.” he had silver glitter polish on his nails and it was something else to make the desire flare in Derek’s belly.

But Stiles was right, he had a girlfriend and when he had met Stiles he had used Jennifer as a shield against Stiles hitting on him, and now even the thought of Jennifer made him feel grimy.

Stiles cupped his good hand around the back of Derek’s neck and his hand was dry and as heavy as an anchor. “It’s just a bad time,” he repeated. The elevator clanked to a final stop, with a bone-shaking lurch and it made Stiles laugh again and more than anything Derek wanted to make him laugh forever.

 

They went into the apartment with Stiles following Derek, Derek took Stiles’ coat and hung it next to his own feeling a sense of rightness seeing it there that he could not explain, “do you mind if I?” Stiles asked him.

“Oh, sure,” Derek answered filling in the gaps for himself, “it’s just through there,” he pointed to the hallway between the kitchen area and the sitting space, “first on the left, shall I make coffee?”

“Tea, if you have it,” Stiles answered, “if not a glass of water is just fine, but I,” he gestured to the hallway.

Derek took the hint and let him go.

He made coffee, just a small pot because it was late, and used the stovetop kettle to boil the water for the tea, rooting around in the cupboards until he found a tin caddy of teabags, he sniffed it experimentally before he added it to the cup, although he had no idea if he could tell if it was good by smell. The caddy read “Russian Caravan,” but the tab only told him the brand so he wasn’t sure if that’s what it was. He had a momentary panic over whether or not to add milk followed by the second panic that he wasn’t sure if he even had any because neither he or jennifer put it in their coffee or ate cereal and they ate out far more often than cooked.

He felt itchy, like he was up to something that he should not be, like being a mischievous child and being scared that his mother might catch him. It was a strange sensation because he had been mostly well behaved and in the rare times that he had been disobedient his mother had known that it was his uncle Peter that was to blame. Uncle Peter had died in the fire and not been around to blame for the past ten years.

That was the most that he had thought of the fire in since he had returned to Beacon Hills, and that was strange indeed for the tragedy of it devastated of him.

Stiles phone, sat on the kitchen counter where he had put it when he went to the bathroom, screeched out and danced across the granite with the opening of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song which startled Derek. The called ID read DAD so Derek assumed that it was important. He carried it over to the bathroom, “Stiles,” he called out and the door which was only ajar pushed open when Derek touched it to knock. Stiles was stood at the vanity counter with a cup of water and a contact lens case full of pills.

“Get out,” Derek told him, overwhelmed with a sudden anger, he felt betrayed and grimy and he could not explain why.

“It’s not what you think,” Stiles protested, “it’s,”

“It’s not you taking drugs in my bathroom?” Derek asked.

“It is, they are drugs but,” he stopped, “they’re not illegal, they’re prescription, this one,” he held up a canary yellow capsule, “they’re to settle my stomach because these,” he held up a large hot pink pill, “ibuprofen for my wrist, rot through your stomach lining, and these,” he lifted the last few capsules and tablets, resting them on his palm, before letting them fall back on the counter, “they’re for this.”

With his hands free he lifted his shirt.

There was a tattoo there, it was a tree stump with a sapling growing from it, where the leaves turned to crows but the sapling was an attempt to cover a thick line of scar tissue along his sternum. “I had a heart transplant as a kid, I have to take the drugs or my body might reject it. I was so sick for such a long time,” he paused, “and I owe you no explanation, but this is your apartment, now, can I have my phone or were you hoping that Led Zeppelin would go on to score your life.” Derek passed over the phone and stepped back.

 

\---

The years had not been kind to the mysterious Kate. Her hair was a dyed ash blonde with dark roots and she wore a pair of jeans that were almost painted on, with a blue leopard print camisole over a black bra that was on display, and a short black leather jacket. She had been beautiful, in a hard way when Peter had seen her through the fire, and again in Brunski’s memories, but as she stood, smoking, leaned up against her car, she looked old. Her skin was prematurely wrinkled at the eyes and around the mouth. Peter watched her through Ligeia’s pinpoint whirligig sight. When she finished her first cigarette she used the embers of it to light a second. She had the sprawling confidence of someone who had been beautiful in her youth and had not realised that it was fleeting as she aged, and she had aged badly. Her figure had gone from slim and athletic to wiry and firm, and it was clear that the volume in her hair was lacquer and not health.

Even from the distance, Peter could almost taste her, old cigarette smoke, teen spirit body spray and far too much perfume hanging about her like a poisonous miasma with cordite staining her fingertips and other fainter, older smells in the folds of her clothes.

Her car was an old muscle car, Peter had never been good at identifying cars, but was at least from the seventies with a bronze coloured pearl coat and a phoenix emblazon on the front.

Kate had a sort of old money loucheness, the sort that was used to money and the wastefulness of someone who had never gone without, for her clothes and car were expensive but she seemed to have no value for them, they were just things that she used until they didn’t suit her and then she replaced them without care or sentimentality.

With Ligeia’s eyes he could see the discarded fast food wrappers thrown into the back seat of her expensive car and forgotten, the scuff marks on her designer boots, even the tears in the lining of her leather coat.

Kate was a facade and he was going to enjoy tearing her down.

 

\---

“I’m sorry,” both Stiles and Derek blurted it out at the same time, then both stopped, embarrassed. Stiles scrubbed his cast over his shorn scalp as Derek clenched and then released the tension with a loud breath. “Why are you apologising?” It was Derek that broke the silence. “I’m the one who jumped to conclusions.”

“Because I was an ass and I snapped and I shouldn’t have. You couldn’t have known. I was taking my meds secretly in your bathroom, I should have said what I was doing. I look like I lost a fight with my couch, which I did, of course I’m taking meds, I have a broken arm. You’d have to be the absolute worst not to be understanding of that.”

“The absolute worst?” Derek asked,

“Oh absolutely,” the flirting had started again and it was easy. Everything was easy with Stiles which was a surprise to Derek because he was used to everything being difficult. After the fire his grief had gotten in the way because people didn’t understand. “So I can be the tin man because i had to get a new heart, and you can be the scarecrow because you don’t have a brain.”

“Obviously,” Derek said.

“Obviously,” Stiles agreed, “and we’ll both be friends of Dorothy.”

Derek roared with laughter, he couldn’t help it. Stiles had set it up so beautifully and Derek still hadn’t seen it coming, and it was funny so he laughed.

“You should laugh like that more often, it suits you” Stiles said, and it was with a warm smile. It felt genuine in a way that many compliments Derek felt did not. Derek was handsome and rich, hardbodied in a way that using exercise to sublimate his grief made him. He was surrounded by compliments, but Stiles’, out of all of them, meant it. “Are we good?” Stiles asked him.

“We’re good,” Derek said gesturing to the couch for them to sit, “I went to all the trouble of making you tea, if I throw you out now I’m going to have to drink it and I’m surprised that I even had some.”

“I’m a proper tea belly,” Stiles told him, flopping down on the white leather couch, “but it's a hard thing to be, the problem is that sweet tea is like tea flavored sugar and far too sweet for me, iced tea tends to be green and some fruit or another, and cold tea tastes like ass.”

“You taste a lot of ass?” Derek asked, as he got the mugs from the kitchen area and bringing to the couch, putting them on the coasters on the table, because his mother had drilled it into him that hot cups ruined woodwork and he couldn’t not. Stiles smile was vulpine sharp and wicked and brought his white fox tattoo to Derek’s attention.

“Well, you know us friends of Dorothy, we all have lists of our favourite things, like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, hot tea that doesn’t taste of ass.”

“Isn’t the Sound of Music a Julie Andrews movie?” Derek asked him, feeling about for the remote control but unsure if he wanted to put the TV on.

“Is it?” Stiles looked adorably confused and Derek, more than anything, wanted to kiss him again. “That’s it, I shall have to hand in my ass-eating credentials as I am obviously not as good a friend of Dorothy as I thought,” and Derek laughed again, “it must be on account of us not talking so much of late, what with us living so far apart and her dying years before I was born.”

“Was the call important?” Derek felt changing the conversation was natural, he was almost certain that Stiles was flirting with him, and doing so both knowing that Derek had a girlfriend and that it did not matter. He was flirting because it was fun and he enjoyed it.

“It was my dad,” Stiles answered although Derek knew that, “I live in the Bowery and it’s not the best area so when something bad happens my dad phones me to make sure that I’m okay, he’s a police officer so he hears first. It was some crazy gang stuff so he was glad I was here, that kind of thing never happens in Oaktree.”

“Did he say what happened?” Derek was used to this kind of conversation where it was formulaic and almost scripted.

“Someone burned down Harris’ pawn shop, ripped out his fingernails and put him in the hospital,” Stiles told him and Derek reacted with horror, “and another local villain was murdered, apparently he was posed like something from Hannibal, Dad just wanted to know that I was okay and ideally to move into a safer area.”

“And are you,” Derek asked, “okay, I mean.”

Stiles’ smile this time was warm and soft, “yeah,” he said, “I am.”

 

\---

 

Kate met with the young man in the sketch book, that Brunski had called Nolan, in a coincidence that made Peter laugh out loud. Serendipity really was on his side. The man, who had been a lovely youth, had packed on muscle but retained his serial killer’s smile and the dead look behind his eye and it didn’t take much for Peter to know exactly who he was. He understood him completely because he was so very ordinary.

Kate had found him when he was young and malleable and she had made him hers absolutely. He looked at Kate, this thuggish rich woman aging badly, like she had hung the moon and none of her excesses would ever be too much for him to justify and even standing there, leaning against her car with the rain barely making any difference to the shellacked mess of hair he belonged to her.

It was almost tragic.

He handed Kate a small brown bottle. It was the same sort of bottle that Brunski had left all over his apartment and stuffed his dishwasher full with. Careless of who could see her Kate unscrewed the bottle and let several drops of it’s contents fall directly into each of her eyes. Peter watched the tension drain from her like she had been suspended by strings that were cut, releasing her as the drug hit her bloodstream.

As she cupped the man, Nolan’s face, her cigarette still between her fingers and he leaned into the gesture Peter considered what both Valet and Brunski had told him, that Kate was a thug, if you wanted something broken then you sent her, she was a useful, but blunt, instrument.

Kate had burned the Hale house for two reasons, one that she liked fire and that she had no empathy or sense of guilt, but it had been targeted by someone else and if Peter killed the both now, which he absolutely wanted to and was capable of then he would never know who had hired them, but if he delayed that gratification, if he let the man go for now, if he let Ligeia track him he could kill Kate now, or he smiled. He could kill two birds, although the pun was absolutely not intended, with one knife - one of those that he had taken from Valet who had subscribed to the school of thought that oe could never have too many knives or, judging by the contents of his pockets, receipts.

If he seemed to attack them both and let Kate’s pet escape he would run straight to his employer, because by now it had to be obvious that they were being picked off, and if he said why Kate’s little poppet would have a seemingly impossible dilemma, would he stay to protect his queen or would he run to his employer to protect what remained of his worthless hide.

Peter liked it when people were predictable, it meant that he didn’t have to spend as much time getting them to do what he wanted them to.

He jumped down from the roof on which he crouched and landed with one knee bent and both hands on the tarmac before standing up like nothing had happened and he hadn’t just dropped five stories. He had a thing to kill and a puppet to manipulate into revealing his employment, “we’re busy going nowhere,” he sang under his breath, “isn’t it just a crime. We’d like to be unhappy but we never do have the time.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek finally starts to get some answers about what is going on  
> Peter finds Kate

This was shaping up to be a very long night. It wasn’t even midnight yet and the fire which had razed Harris’ pawn shop to the ground had seen the owner in hospital because someone had tortured him, and he had told the officers at the hospital that some crazy meth-head dressed like a superhero and wearing a mask had done it looking for information on Sebastien Valet who was then found murdered and stuck on one of Argent’s Gubernatorial billboards.

Captain Finch was furious. 

Beacon Hills wasn’t the sort of town where a single murder would be enough to rouse the mayor from his bed in the middle of the night but if Finch was to be believed he had been in contact and he was in a foul temper, so she was in a foul temper and had left her office to attend the crime scene.

Stilinski was sure that the billboard was more about location than content because the alley where Valet had been attacked, with his blood splattered all over the walls despite the rain, was below it. If Valet hadn’t been dead by the time he had been pinned to the billboard he was close enough for it to be academic.

But Argent had complained about the murder to Finch and Finch took it out on her officers for their obvious lack of precognition in preventing violence on a known criminal and the torching of a known fence that no one was able to prosecute and shut down. So Finch was now out of her office in the rain, albeit under a sleek black umbrella and not a department issue rain cloak like Stilinski’s, she had an aluminium travel mug for her coffee and the puddle was encroaching on her expensive, impractical, patent pumps that she wore to match her silk pant suit and blouse.

It might have been the first time that she had left her office in the years since her promotion. She was a good detective but she wasn’t a good leader, being more interested in the politics of the position than the business of solving crimes. Crimes like Valet’s, who had terrorised the Bowery for years, were overlooked because of location, but the violent murder of a drug dealer, pimp and known murderer, - which again every knew he had done but couldn’t prove in court due to the very expensive lawyer that he kept on retainer - that she was investigating.

If Stilinski needed a symbol of how far Beacon Hills had gallen after the death of Mayor Hale. Finch in her top dollar pant suit investigating the death of the Beast of Beacon Hills was it.

He wished, as he did at least once a week, that after the Hale house fire, when Stiles had come out of the hospital that he had packed Claudia and Stiles into the car and just driven, just put them in the car and gone anywhere, back before Finch took him off the Hale case adamant that it was an accident, just a terrible accident even though nothing about that case made any sense, before Claudia got sick, back before Beacon Hills turned to shit and took his life with it.

It felt like that was when it started raining too.

 

\---

 

Derek was carrying two mugs to the coffee table when Jennifer opened the door and stepped inside, “oh thank God, Derek,” she said, and he stood there holding the two cups like a little boy who had been interrupted up to no good, “I was worried sick, you weren’t picking up your phone, you had left the office.”

Jennifer, as always, was perfectly groomed, not even the rain dampened her styled hair. She was wearing a charcoal grey fitted jumper dress over a pastel peach blouse and square-toed shoes, as she slipped off her grey wool coat, turning in a fluid motion to hang it on the hook there, in her usual place, but it was where he had hung Stiles’ coat. Derek hadn’t thought anything of it at the time but he had hung Stiles’ ugly as fuck fleecy fur thing on the hook that Jennifer used.

As she turned, still holding her coat, Stiles stood up to introduce himself. He had said before, several times in fact, that he had old-fashioned manners so him standing because a lady entered the room was no surprise - but what happened next was.

From the pocket of his jeans Stiles pulled his deck of cards and stepped forward so he was between Derek and Jennifer as Jennifer attempted to take a step back, but the door had closed behind her, so she side stepped instead, and said crisply and clearly, “I thought that I had killed you already.”

Stiles made sure he was in the line of any danger between Derek and Jennifer as she continued to move, circling around the room to the window, so that something other than wall was at her back, “Julia Baccari,” he said the name and stepped forward forcing Jennifer to take a step to the side, she was tracking the wall, knocking over a small table as to try and get away with him, she wanted anything at her back but wall and she stopped at the window. “It was a good try,” Stiles said but his tone was entirely different, he was like a different person to the one that Derek had spent such a pleasant evening with. This person was cold and seemed to crackle with static electricity. The room suddenly felt cold, as if an arctic wind was blowing through the room.

“I had heard that you were back in Beacon Hills,” Stiles voice was low and syrupy, each syllable enunciated carefully and precisely, and the colour had leached from him, forming dark shadows under his eyes. “It was only a matter of time before we crossed paths.

Derek went to say something, but Stiles threw out his hand to stop him, it was the hand in the cast, he shook his head just a little. Whatever was happening Derek was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, which was ironic as it was his apartment. The confrontation had been a long time in the coming and had nothing to do with him. He had questions but they would have to wait.

“Come now, Julia,” Stiles said, “aren’t you going to introduce yourself, your disguise is exquisite, but show Derek who you really are, what you really look like.”

Jennifer faltered. Derek saw the moment where it happened, just before she slammed down any weakness. Jennifer had been a soft fragile thing, the kind of woman who needed and was devastated with worry over an unreturned phone call or an ignored text. For a moment Derek saw through it, and then the act came back and there was no hint that she had ever been anything else, but it had been long enough for Derek to doubt her now. “Are you who he says you are?”

“Derek,” she said and there seemed to be a weight to his name he had never heard before, “you know me, you know better than to believe this,” it was an artful pose, the perfect image of docility and doubted fidelity, but Derek could see it for an act now. It had all been an act. “I don’t know who he is.”

“You just said it,” Derek met her gaze until she was forced to lower her gaze. “You said that you thought that you’d killed him.”

Something cold and manipulative slithered across her features, a smirk replacing that doe-like innocence and worry, “clever little foxling,” she purred, “to break just enough of my hold on him that he would hear what I truly said, but not enough to alert me to it.”

“He wouldn’t have believed me if I had told him, just a little protection against the both of us. I have nothing to hide, do you, Julia, have you told him all about who you are, about what you are.”

“Have you?” she answered, “the stink of Eichen is all over you, you’ve clearly spent some time there, tell me, kitten, how’s life in the crazy house.”

“In a word,” Stiles answered, “transformative.” Stiles smiling was an act of violence. Seeing it Jennifer tried to step back again but she bumped against the glass of the window. She was afraid. “I shall certainly tell Marin about this when I next see her.”

Jennifer started to talk in a low voice, something that Derek couldn’t make out because it didn’t sound like it was in a language that he spoke, but it was vitriolic and it curled her mouth into a shape that Derek had not thought that it could make, but he had truly known nothing about her and now he was stood behind the two of them, still clutching the two mugs because he hadn’t had the opportunity to put them down.

Stiles drew a card from the pack that he had taken from his pocket, with a single hand so it was face up on the deck and then turned it to Jennifer as he said “none of that,” and Jennifer, seeing the card, threw up both of her arms up to protect her face as an almighty blast propelled her backwards out of the window and into the dark beyond. 

Derek caught a glimpse of the card as Stiles pocketed them - it was the lovers.

“Fuck,” Stiles said, “I told my Dad that I’d be safe here,” he said as if that was the issue. “You have questions? I bet you have questions.”

“You just threw my girlfriend out of the window,” Derek said, his rage hampered by the two mugs that he was still holding, “I,” he put the cups down, and started to go towards the house phone where it was fixed to the wall.

“That was your girlfriend? Shit,” Stiles said, “you don’t need to call 911,” he qualified, seeing that his nonchalance was making Derek more upset, “look, she’s already gone.”

Holding the handset Derek staggered over to the window and instead of the broken body that he expected to see there was only broken glass. “But,” he found that language escaped him, his brain was not providing him with words, and the walls were closing in - it was getting hard to breathe, he couldn’t quite catch his breath.

 

\---

 

Peter had considered several ways to kill Kate as he walked across the road to where she was parked under a streetlight. She didn’t notice him, she was too busy extravagantly kissing her young man. Peter took one of his two knives, and drove it into the man’s shoulder, then pushed him aside with his now free hand, even as he stepped forward and put the other one up to Kate’s throat.

There was a lot to be said for simplicity after all.

Kate had a gun in her belt. It was not holstered, it had just been shoved through the waistband of her jeans, so Peter snatched it before Kate could, tugging it free of the fabric, “hasn’t anyone ever told you that this is just a recipe for shooting yourself in the foot?” he flicked off the safety and fired. The first shot went into her left foot, the second low in her belly, and the third went in the direction of her young man, sending him scuttling off, holding his injured arm to his chest.

Kate spat at him and Peter just let it slide down his face. “The Beast did that too,” he said, “I had hoped that you would be more original.”

“I’ll kill you,” she spat the words out with blood, “I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Yes,” Peter sighed, “he said that too, you want to know what he else he did?” He pushed the knife at her neck close against the soft flesh under her jaw, “something you haven’t done, by the way,” he paused for effect, “he recognised me.”

 

\---

 

“Sorry about the mess,” Stiles said opening the heavy metal door to his loft apartment, sliding it across on its runners with a dull sound. “I have cats.”

Derek wasn’t sure why he had agreed to accompany Stiles back to his apartment except that it had, at the time, seemed to make a strange amount of sense. He had talked about things like wards and protection matrices and then the phrase that clinched the deal, “she doesn’t know where I live.”

He had offered to take Derek to an all-night place called Crazy Finstock’s all American Diner because whatever Julia, and he insisted on using that name and not calling her Jennifer, wanted from Derek she wasn’t likely to try it in public and he’d understand if Derek didn't trust either of them at the moment, but Stiles was offering something that Jennifer hadn’t - answers.

“I love cats,” the answer felt rote and wooden in his mouth, the sort of thing that people lied about to be polite. “How many have you got?”

Stiles actually looked abashed as he answered, “fourteen,” then paused, “fifteen,” another break, “no fourteen. If you see a white one with one blue eye and one green one that’s Minnie the Mooch, she’s not mine but she likes to show up at night when her owner kicks her out then goes home in time for breakfast. I only found out that she was a freeloader when I took her in to be spayed, them’s the rules, you can stay in and get fed but you get neutered, so I took her to Deaton and,” Derek cut him off with a kiss. His hands were on Stiles’ waist and this time Stiles couldn’t say that Derek had a girlfriend to use to push him away.

Stiles turned his face again, but he kept his hands, and the weight of his cast on Derek’s neck, “I want this,” he said, “do not question how much that I want this,” he tilted his face so Derek’s mouth with its soft kisses trailed along his jaw, “but I wanna make sure that you want this, you have to be in a tail spin,” Derek squeezed his ass, he couldn’t help it, he had wanted to since he had first seen it when they left the bar. 

“Stop, just for a minute,” Stiles stepped back, “just a minute, just let me make sure.” He made sure to step out of Derek’s reach, “you’ve been through Hell, your sister died, your girlfriend just got thrown out of a window, you had a panic attack, your adrenaline is up, and if we do this I want to make sure you know what you’re doing, that I don’t become something for you to regret.”

Derek sucked in a great breath through his nose, he counted to ten before he answered. “I,” he let out a great, “I don’t know, I just,”

Stiles offered him a wan smile, “tea?” he asked, turning, and Derek, for the first time took the opportunity to look around the apartment, it was a loft space with wooden floors and the furniture was sparse more because of the size of it than design. There was a large turquoise velour couch that looked surprisingly comfortable, and was covered in throw pillows and blankets, and now that he looked, at least two of what he had thought was furry pillows were in fact large and rather fat cats. There were bean bags and floor pillows, a thick rug of knit fabric where the yarn was as thick as Derek’s wrist which looked soft and warm, and there were canvasses. 

He stopped, Stiles was pottering about in the kitchen, making tea Derek supposed from the noise of cupboard doors opening and closing and the clattering of crockery, but it was the canvas on the wall by the drawing board that caught his eye.

The woman was on a swing, the ropes of which were covered in camellias, she wore a yellow sundress and one of her pumps was hanging off her foot, her red hair streamed behind her and her expression was one of absolute love. Yet as Derek looked closer things were wrong, each camellia had a skull at it's centre, the pattern on her dress was figures like those in a Hieronymous Bosch painting in a slightly darker yellow that still managed to look like the original design. There was something dark twining through her hair and her eyes showed someone's reflection. It was a horror painting that did not, at first, look like one.

Derek was still staring at it when Stiles offered him a steaming mug, “do you know who she is?” Derek asked. “Are you?” he couldn’t think of a way to say it, was Stiles one of those macabre ghouls who fixed on him because of the Hale fire, because he had lost his family. People were sick, they read about the fire and that eight people had died and they sought him out just to have sex with someone who had been in a fire where eight people died, but why then did Stiles keep stopping her.

“It’s from a photo,” Stiles said, “I wanted to try something different, a different style, but she’s not for sale, she means too much to me.”

“She’s my aunt,” Derek said, “or she was, she was married to my uncle.”

“Oh?” Stiles said and he was very surprised, “she’s the woman who gave me my heart.” He moved over to the couch and sat down, “I was very sick as a baby and although I got better my heart didn’t, and so when I got a new heart my Mom wanted to thank the family, a family friend worked at the hospital and she pulled a few strings, you’re not supposed to know, but when she found out about her she didn’t tell us, she gave us this photo that she had found online. I could have done a google image search I suppose but I never wanted to know, I carried the photo with me, thinking she was watching over me,” he laughed to himself, “that’s the first time that I was ever happy with how I drew her, so many canvasses were painted over. I only recently found out her name.”

“Lydia,” Derek said.

Stiles had his hand on his sternum, “I had such a crush on her as a teenager,” he smiled to himself, “but I also had a crush on Errol Flynn,” he admitted, “being alive didn’t really make much difference to me as a kid.”

Derek sat down on the couch but at the other end so that they were not touching, his tea smelled sweetly of fruit, considering the late hour it was probably caffeine free. He couldn’t think of what to say so he stayed silent. Stiles was fidgeting, silence made him uncomfortable, and he was turning his cup round and around in his hands, “what happened with Jennifer?”

“Her name is Julia,” Stiles said, “she’s,” he screwed up his face as he searched for words to describe it. “She’s powerful and she’s old, it’s,” he paused again, “my mom used to call it the Shining because we didn’t have another word for it, I’d know things before I should, not just who was at the end of a phone call before the phone started ringing, I mean everyone does that now and again, but I’d draw something and it would come true,” he put his cup down and stood up, going to the drawing table and lifting a sheet of paper, there was a doodle on one corner, “let me show you,” he took a pen, just a basic marker, from the workstation beside the drawing table, popped the lid and drew something quickly. He then passed the piece of paper to Derek, there was a drawing of a spoon there. It was not especially detailed but it did look exactly like a spoon, there was even a little shadow in the bowl of it.  

“Okay,” Derek said and handed him the piece of paper back.

“Watch,” holding the paper flat with the hand in his cast he touched it and from the paper, slowly and carefully, he pulled the spoon into his hand, then passed it over to Derek.

It was a spoon, it looked like a normal spoon and had the weight of one and the panic burbled up in him and he laughed, it was clearly not sleight of hand, the way that he had done it Stiles had reached into the paper and pulled out the spoon. 

“It’s still made of paper,” Stiles said, “it’s as strong as a normal spoon, I mean you could probably tunnel out of Shawshank with it, but if it gets wet it’ll turn to mush.” 

Derek made another high pitched strangled laugh. “There is no spoon.” Stiles said with a smile, he was trying to make it easy for Derek but Derek was in the process of having his worldview rearranged. “I,” he started and the teacup fell from his fingers, because he had forgotten how to hold the cup, “I,” the cup for a moment seemed to fall in slow motion before landing on the wooden floor and shattering, the hot tea inside sprayed out in an arc which was followed by a jumping yowling cat and Derek could not have said if he had scalded it or just startled it as it started hissing at him, and it was a big cat, perhaps as large as a corgi, and it meant business. “Oh shush you,” Stiles said, putting his own cup down and reaching up to pick up the  cat, “this is Sir Julian,” he said, stroking the cat’s head, he stood up, still holding the cat, to get some paper towels for the mess from his worktable. He noticed that although Derek had dropped his mug, and more cats had come from under blankets and on pillows to lap it up before it went too far or was wiped up, he was still holding the spoon. His hand had formed a fist around the spoon.

“It doesn’t work on machines,” Stiles said, “or anything with moving parts, they just don’t work, they come out as a solid lump, but it’s the easiest thing to show you. A lot of what I can do is in dreams, my dreams come true, every last one of them.” There was some bile and resentment in his words as he spoke, “not my fantasies, not what I want, but my dreams, but no one listens.”

“Did you dream me?” Derek asked.

“Yes, no, it’s,” Stiles stopped, looking up from where he was kneeling on the floor with a handful of wet paper towels and a cat under his arm, “fuck.” It seemed to be the most appropriate word. “I knew that I had to be there, and I knew it was important, but I didn’t know who was going to be there, I knew someone would, I could feel it, like a rope wrapped around my sternum tugging me, and when I saw you then I knew it was you, but I didn’t dream you, well, not as a person, as a pair of hands, as the line of your neck, I don’t dream like that, let me show you.”

Derek had no idea what that meant but now that Stiles had mopped up the spill with the paper towels he went into the kitchen to dump them, but as he came back he lifted a sketchbook down from the bookcase and handed it to Derek. It was a black Moleskine which was held shut with an elastic strap, but the strap had gone loose and had been tied in a knot to keep it tight.

“I started drawing my dreams, when I was a kid, I started filling in that book eight years ago, so some of them are quite shit, I got better, obviously, but that’s what I dreamed of you.”

Derek clutched the book tightly between his hands as a black cat moved across from him and managed to jump on the footstool with a malice that he had not thought a small creature was capable of. The footstool was old and battered leather, a donut of sewn together coloured panels that had suffered years of use before it had found its way into the apartment and the cat clearly thought of it as his throne. This was not the fat Sir Julian who Stiles had put down somewhere, but a black mass with greengage eyes and a wonky tooth that stuck out of his bottom jaw and it started to knead the leather with it’s claws out, the entire image of villainy was ruined however by the bright blue colour of his claws. “That’s Frank,” Stiles said, “he’s mean, and he scratches, I took him to the vet to get him fixed and he was like a whirling dervish of death, so yeah, he has caps now, that’s why his nails are blue, don’t let him intimidate you, it doesn’t hurt when he does it any more.”

“Frank?” Derek asked.

“For Frank Castle, I started off giving them names of famous cats, yanno, but that little fucker earned his name,” a laugh, slightly hysterical, burbled out of Derek, “shit,” Stiles saw noticing it happen, “lemme,” he rooted around behind cushions on the floor until he found a large white persian cat which he put on Derek’s lap, “that’s Gabriel, well Gabrielle, she surprised me with kittens which is why they all get the snip now, but yeah, she likes people.” The cat just settled on his knee and started purring, which was a deep bassy rumble that rolled through Derek. “Just let her do her thing and I’ll get you some more tea, because I’d really rather not you had another panic attack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have over 1k of cut content where missteps happened and huge chunks had to be cut,  
> that's one of the reasons i'm so behind, the other being i feel like recycled crap but here the next bit  
> it's a bit shorter because as i said i had to cut a huge chunk, but things start to happen


	7. Chapter 7

The inside of Kate’s expensive muscle car was even more of a trash pit than it had looked. The ashtray was overflowing with used butts and candy wrappers, and there were empty soda cans and coffee cups all over the floor of the passenger seat, with a makeup bag open on the seat itself. There were other things, a roll of electrical tape which served to tie her hands to the steering wheel, an old shirt, packed into the wound in her stomach to keep her alive longer because the air was already sweet with death and fetid with the smell of shit. In shooting her he had perforated her bowel and knew that death was inevitable now. If he got her to a hospital then they might be able to save her, but it would be a long fight against infection, assuming she didn’t just bleed out from internal damage, and he had no intention of letting her walk away.

He didn’t say anything about the state of her car, just swept aside the crap on the passenger seat and sat down. “Here is what is going to happen,” he said, “you are going to drive until I tell you to stop.”

Kate spat out a string of foul invectives. Peter just laughed. His laugh felt manic but he didn’t care, it fit the situation more sweetly than if he had been calm about it. He felt like the Joker on uppers and if his mania scared Kate all the better.

“I’ll kill you, I’ll fucking kill you,” she snarled.

“How original, do you know Valet and Brunski said something similar before I killed them, and after this I’m going to do your boy, Nolan was it?” Kate didn’t seem bothered by that information, “and then, once I’ve killed him I’m going to follow the trail he leaves, I’m going to track him back to the people behind your organisation, all those people who pay you enough for the expensive clothes and cars and then I’m going to kill them.” She maintained her cold nonchalance, despite the fact the wound in her stomach was oozing blood and half of her foot was missing. She was behaving like a soldier in enemy territory and not showing her pain although she very much had to be in agony.

She was blithely unwilling to accept the truth of what was happening, that there was no way that she was coming out of this alive, but she was sure that she would. Peter had to admire her arrogance. She was a woman who had never had repercussions, the world had bent to her will and it had made her cruel, and that cruelty she had taken out on Beacon Hills. She had burned down his house and she had laughed, and she still thought that she was going to walk away from this because no one had ever held her accountable.

Peter would.

Peter would make her burn.

Peter would burn all of those responsible, even if it meant burning the world.

Lydia had always said that he didn’t do things by half measures.

He missed her so fiercely it hurt, it was like a gaping hole inside him and he could not function for it.

She had told him a story once, they were driving but he didn’t remember where, just that she was sat in the passenger seat, with her hair down, and the lights going past her face in stripes during the night. She said that people were born with a great chasm inside them in the story, so they filled it with want and because of it people could do nothing but want, but sometimes, just sometimes, they could find the thing that they wanted so much that that singular need overwhelmed them, he didn’t remember the rest of the story, or even if she finished it before they pulled into the hotel for the night, but that idea from her childhood story, told to her by her grandmother, lingered, but she was the thing that he wanted to the point that he wanted nothing else, that his endless human greed was replaced by her.

And this woman in the car had taken her from him.

Peter had told Lydia as often as he could how much he loved her, and how he lived to make her happy. He had loved lying with her beneath him, her thighs parted around him and the way she lifted her back, her hair forming lashing ropes around her under the pushed up pillow and he’d breathe into her ear, reciting poetry “ _here is the deepest secret nobody knows_ _(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_ _and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows_ _higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)_ _and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_ _i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)”_

And he would trace the pad of his thumb over the curve of her breast, over the raised ridge of rib where she had had those words tattooed in Peter’s own handwriting as a promise, “i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)”. Those were the words that the boy had said to him, the words he had seemed surprised to say and that Peter could no longer bear to hear.

Those were the words that had sent Peter out of the apartment and into the rain, the words that had fallen from his lips so easily and now someone else held his heart. In her health, Lydia had signed a form for organ donation and now some boy, some strange magical boy- a seer, had her heart and with it Peter’s own, and it was this woman’s fault. He carried Peter’s heart in Lydia’s underneath his sternum.

And so Kate would burn because she had taken his heart from him.

 

\---

 

The cat worked its own magic sat on Derek’s lap, it was a fat lazy lump of white fur that was coarse but as thick as the San Francisco fog, and it had a purr like a lawnmower, but it eased the ball of overwhelming tension that sat inside him. It was like the more it purred the more that the tension melted away. Stiles was kneeling on the thick yarn rug watching him, waiting, he said nothing, he just watched Derek as he started to pet the cat. It was a juddery odd movement at first, he had no idea how to pet such a creature, and then the cat leaned up into the warmth of his hand and the panic ebbed. The room seemed to stretch back to its usual size, from where it had been closing around him, and the air lost its heavy thickness. “Did you just use magic on me?” He asked Stiles.

“No,” Stiles said, finally getting up by putting his hand on one thigh and leveraging himself up, “Gabriel just has that power on her own,” as he got to his feet he stretched a little with his arms up over his head, “now imagine if I’d put Frank over there on your knee.”

Derek laughed because he could see what would happen, Frank was still glaring at him from his foot cushion, padding into the leather with his claws out and his little wonky tooth sticking out of his lips, but a gaze like the Eye of Sauron. “He’s the reborn soul of some vast ancient beast or a carragor.”

“A carragor?” Stiles said, “oh, you like the Lord of the Rings, oh, you’ll love this.” He went to the drawing board and pulled out a travel portfolio and unzipped it, leaning over it as he flicked through and then pulled out a piece of card, and brought it over to Derek, “here,” he said and Derek took his hand off Gabriel to reach over and take it. It was a picture of one of the cities from the Lord of the Rings, Minas Tirith with lots of figures firing arrows at a drake being ridden by the Witch-King of Angmar himself. It was done in a pale watercolor with brown ink outlines. “I was in a competition for scenes for the Lord of the Rings, that was mine.”

“Have you ever done anything for Gormenghast?” Derek asked, he wanted to know in that moment if Stiles had ever drawn Fuscia if he had drawn her to look like Laura because he was talented and magical and he knew things and Laura had always been his Fuschia.

“You like Mervyn Peake?” Stiles’ face lit up, “oh my god, you’re perfect, you really are, I love Mervyn Peake, well more his illustrations than his prose, because there’s so little of that, but when I was in Eichen my doctor recommended him to me, she thought I’d like his illustrations because they were so strange, I have his Alice on my arm here,” he thrust out his wrist to show the ink there, “I have some of his pictures of the castle on my bedroom walls, but I’d have to take you up there to show you, I have some character sketches but they’re at my Dad’s.”

“May I?” Derek asked, he put the watercolor on its card backing down against the chair and held out his hand to take Stiles’ wrist in his own.

He was unprepared for touching Stiles, his arm was hot against Derek’s palm, it was just human heat but it felt more, almost tropical, and tacky damp from sweat and rain, and it was like an electric shock ran through the both of them, because Derek saw Stiles react the same way that he had, and Alice was between them, but Stiles stumbled, back onto his knees on the thick wool rug, falling forward and Derek held his hand out and leaned forward, with the white cat between them, into a heated kiss.

This time Stiles didn’t pull away. His breath was sweet from the tea and his tongue was strong, and he leaned into Derek’s pull, happy to be kissed and this time he didn’t pull away.

 

\---

 

“Drive,” Peter told her, he didn’t bother belting in, it didn’t matter.

“You’re going to fucking die for this,” Kate had lost her cold nonchalance and she had turned to threats because she was starting to get scared. The fear was oozing in where her blood was oozing out. Peter pushed in the cigarette lighter until it clicked.

“Take the next left,” he said. He didn't bother with intonation or intimidation.

“Do you have any fucking idea who you are fucking with?” She asked but she did follow his direction.

“Considering that I singled you out, do you think I don’t know who you are?” he asked, “are you so arrogant that you think you are blameless in all of this, that you don’t have this coming?” He turned in the seat and took his leg from the footwell of the passenger side and slammed it down into the driver’s side and against the gas pedal, with the car speeding up with a roar.

There was a tree on the corner as they approached, a huge oak tree and it was clear what Peter intended, “you’ll kill us both,” she shrieked.

Peter smiled, a slow slithering thing across his face, “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Katie?” he asked her, “I’m already dead.”

The car hit the tree fast enough that Peter was flung free, skidding across the sidewalk until he came to a natural stop, shaking out the damage and the dust and then fixing his hair.

Kate was strapped in, her hands tied to the steering wheel as they were by tape dangled uselessly from her broken arms and she was groaning, blood running down her face from the cuts on her hairline. It was unlikely that she would have walked away from the crash even if she hadn’t been nursing a gut shot.

He walked over to her, reached in through the window and lifted out the cigarette lighter. “Do you want to know why I’m doing this? You took everything I cared about, all you care about is this car, so I’m destroying it first,” he dropped the lighter which burned hot at the end, “the gas tank is cracked, how long do you think it will take the spill to reach the fire, but don’t worry, you’ll probably pass out before you burn alive.”

Then he turned and walked away, ignoring the explosion when it happened behind him, just a small thing, the remaining gas igniting and blowing out the tank, but as he did he picked at the vest he was wearing, the leather was ruined. The little seer had gone to such effort in dressing him, it was a shame but he had no real choice, he had to discard it.

 

\---

 

Derek pulled Stiles’ teeshirt up over his head to reveal his chest, lamenting that he had to pull his mouth away from him that long, as Stiles scrabbled at Derek’s own with his long fingers, which meant batting at his belt with his cast. Stiles’ mouth was swollen, the split in his lip agitated by their kissing but he had said nothing about it and didn’t seem inclined to stop. He let Derek kiss at his jaw but he couldn’t quite get his hands to pull Derek’s shirt out of his pants and undo the buttons all at the same time.

Although, when he had gotten back to his apartment Derek had gotten rid of his tie and jacket from the office he was still wearing his black button down, and now Stiles was trying to remove it and he couldn’t quite figure out how whilst he was kissed and Derek got Stiles’ own teeshirt up over his head.

The ink on his chest was beautiful, Derek had sort of seen it before, when Stiles had raised his shirt to show the scar, it was a stump from which a sapling was growing and the leaves from the sapling were pulled free by an illustrated wind and they turned into crows that were flying free across his pectoral under his collarbone. Derek made the mental note that later he would spend time learning these tattoos and what they meant, because they clearly meant something to Stiles, but right now his lips were on Stiles’ skin and Stiles’ breath was mingling with his breath and they were both trying hard to breathe and to kiss and touch and it was the most glorious madness.

Gabriel, the white cat who had been on Derek’s lap, finally jumped down and Derek followed him down onto the mat, the thick wool thing that was even softer than it looked and he wanted to help Stiles who was still fumbling with his shirt in their passion but that would have meant taking his hands from Stiles’ skin.

There was a sense of infinity in touching him as if there were entire galaxies were contained within his skin.

Stiles, finally losing patience with Derek’s shirt, tried to jerk it open possibly with the intention to mend the buttons after, or secure in the knowledge that Derek would forgive him for it, or even that he could certainly afford a new shirt, but although it wasn’t his dominant hand that was broken Stiles didn’t have the strength to tear away the buttons which made Derek burst out laughing.

Instead of being offended Stiles just smiled, distorted by the way his lip had swollen, and then laughed with him, letting Derek work open the buttons even as Stiles tried to push the shirt away from his shoulders and that eagerness just made Stiles laugh more.

Stiles was beautiful in his laughter because every part of him was involved in his laughter, his entire body rocked with it, his mouth open as wide as he could get it, and his hand on his sternum to support him and not keep the laughter inside.

He was gorgeous and he was letting Derek touch.

It made Derek feel humbled, not enough for it to override the overwhelming feelings of desire and the need to touch and taste and smell and consume but humbled nonetheless.

Stiles, having finally gotten Derek’s shirt off, put his mouth on the cords of Derek’s neck, his nose running through the bristles of Derek’s beard, and his eyes shining like copper pennies in the electric light, like he was some sort of faerie and that he was going to swallow Derek whole and Derek wanted him to.

“Fuck,” Stiles said into the curve of Derek’s neck. He didn’t stop, his hands running over Derek’s back, but it was not a good exhortation of fuck, it was clearly in despair over something. “I really wanna blow you,” he said, “but I can’t with these damn stitches.”

“Is that the couch which hurt you?” Derek asked looking across to the blue velour couch, it was soft and so comfortable and draped in pillows and blankets and cats, “I’ll get you a new one because I really want to destroy it right now.”

“That’s the cat I tripped over,” Stiles looked across at Frank who was even less impressed by the idea that they were going to have sex in front of him and continued mauling the foot stool, “I told you he was an evil bastard.”

And that made Derek laugh and his laughter made Stiles laugh too and the movement of it made Derek want to reach out and touch so he splayed his hand over Stiles’ throat, so that his fingertips were against his swollen lip. “Can we?” Derek asked, referring to the inevitable sex that was going to happen.

“I’m bruised, not castrated,” Stiles said, “I just have to be careful because I don’t want to clock you with this,” he raised his cast, “and I don’t want to have to go back to the Emergency room for more stitches in my lip - especially if this time it is a sex accident.” He kissed at Derek’s fingertips, “but I’m pretty sure there’s a tube of lube in the couch cushions.”

“Can I change my mind and love the couch?” Derek asked.

Stiles looked impish, an expression slightly ruined by the colours of his skin, dark purple turning yellow at the edges, the band-aid across his nose and his swollen lip, “do you know what I liked to do, after I shower I sit on it, in just my towel, and take all the time i want to jack off, because I’m a grown up and it’s my apartment and there is no one tell me to lock the damn door, because when you lean back and your neck is supported by that back cushion and your feet are on the rug it’s sublime, it’s almost like being cradled in a giant cloud, and well, it’s the first thing any red blooded man would do in such a situation, jerk off.”

Derek wanted to see it, “or we could go upstairs to my bedroom and continue our conversation there, where there are fewer cats.”

“Fewer cats might be a selling point,” Derek said and looked across at Frank who took this as an opportunity to stop murdering the foot stool and to lift his leg to aggressively lick his balls instead, “it’s only a matter of time before someone,” he gestured with his head to Frank, “tries to murder me in my sleep.”

“I don’t let the cats in the bedroom,” Stiles said with a laugh, “so you only have to worry if you fall asleep in here,” he kissed Derek again, a fleeting thing to remind Derek of where they were going with this, in case Derek had managed to forget, “and then it would be on the rug, because really this rug is the best fifteen dollars I have ever spent.”

“Fifteen?” Derek was surprised at that, this sort of thing was usually very expensive because it was lush.

“Groupon,” Stiles said, “I only lament that I only bought one, I should have gotten like ten, it’s amazing.”

Derek couldn’t contain his laughter, and what was more, he didn’t want to.

 

Stiles’ bedroom was more sparse than the main room down the spiral staircase, the brick walls were bare, and there was a door which clearly led to the bathroom off it, although there was a lavatory behind the kitchen in a room with the washing machine and dryer. There was a huge floor to ceiling window where the mezzanine had clearly been put in the middle of the high ceilings so that someone could look down from the balcony with the spiral staircase, perhaps it was an office before the building was converted, and that office was Stiles’ bedroom.

There was no fitted wardrobes or closets, so his room was full of old, but not antique, furniture. There was a bureau, sat with the flap down and a laptop on it, surrounded by bits of paper, an old coffee cup and ball point pens and pencils. The wardrobe in the corner looked like it would lead to Narnia. It was a tall thing of heavy oak and varnish raised from the floor on a wooden curve and there was a key hanging from the lock in the closed doors. There was an ottoman, again old and mismatching, with worn red velvet padding and a battered teddy bear wearing an eye patch wearing a sling and a bandage on his foot. The bear was leaning against a dresser covered in photos in mismatched frames, some of which had been doodled over and there was post-it notes on some of them, as if by highlighting what it was that he needed with the faces of the people he loved Stiles was more likely to remember them.

He was avoiding looking at the bed.

They had moved from the possibility of sex to the inevitability of sex and with it, they had become awkward, Stiles had gone into the bathroom to “put on something a little more comfortable,” he had said with an exaggerated wink leaving Derek alone in his bedroom without even the cats to distract him.

On the wall with no doors or windows, the one that the ottoman and dresser were framed prints of pencil and ink sketches of the sprawling mass of Castle Gormenghast. It was a sprawling mass of buildings crammed together on a hill leading up to the tower, exactly as it had been described in the book, and it had the image of buildings built on buildings, up and up, so that the history was crammed underneath with the poor, where people lived because there was space. The collection of prints were where the picture had been spread over several pages so that they were collected to show the entire picture and the level of detail, like it had been sketched directly onto the wall with the white frames and hints of brick work between them to show that they were prints but it meant when Stiles woke up, when he moved over to the photos of his family, a firm looking sandy haired man who was his father and a woman with soft dark hair and rounded features who shared his soft mouth and was clearly his mother, he looked on the prints and it was like looking out of a window to behold Castle Gormenghast and it’s higgledy piggledy construction and people.

He imagined that he could open a window in this old industrial building and wave at Lord Sepulchrave or the Countess, sat in her tower on her bed of pillows with maids maintaining her crowning glory of bright red hair.

He was not in any way avoiding looking at the bed. The bed represented sex and he wanted sex, he did, he wanted to have sex with Stiles, he had removed his shoes and socks in preparation for sex with Stiles, he had even found a box of condoms that were where Stiles had told him that they’d be, but he was getting nervous.

It might have been because the night had been so much.

His entire world had changed.

Jennifer had lied. It felt distant- far away- like it had happened years before and the wound had scarred over so that it only ached a little when the weather changed. She had used him and betrayed him, both body and mind and he gave her so little regard now it was like she had done it to a stranger and he wasn’t sure why - why that was and that upset him more than what she had done which was worthy of upset on its own. He was getting tangled in his own thoughts, this woman who had been there for him this last year of his life had been someone, something, else and she had manipulated him, probably for access to his money, and he didn’t care, other than the sort of distant anger that people had for other people’s hurts and injuries.

His emotional response to what she had done should not be the mild ire that a person felt for a news story where some local idiot had been scammed on the internet because they lacked common sense. Surely she had hurt him more than some fictional African prince who used a stranger - but he didn’t ache.

Then there was the revelation that magic was real and that magic users lived their lives and fought their wars with non-magical people completely unaware and that maybe Harry Potter was more accurate than people knew and again he didn’t care as much as he should. It was like there was a warm soft blanket draped over him and that was making it easy to process these things, as if they were distant or had happened to someone else.

And there was Stiles, who was long and lean and beautiful and wild and searching and all the things that Derek had wanted to be as a teenager so he was like his favourite character in his favourite book, Titus Groan himself, and was covered in tattoos which Derek had not known would look so beautiful on his skin and more than anything Derek really wanted to fuck him. Ever since he saw him, coming out of the dark and the rain to offer him comfort, Derek wanted to fuck him. And Stiles wanted to fuck him too, and they were drawn together with some amazing inevitability where they could barely keep their hands off each other and Stiles was the complete opposite of all the things that he had ever thought he wanted, not because he was a guy because Derek had never really given a crap about gender, he was attracted to both men and women and it had been natural for him to be so, but he was an artist and covered in tattoos and some vile hideous beast had clearly died to make his ugly as fuck coat and he wore tee shirts with offensive slogans and jeans so tight they looked painted on and he could reach into his pockets like they were Rincewind’s luggage and pull out more things than a human being should be able to stuff into jeans pockets and he made Derek laugh.

It was perhaps that that made him the most remarkable.

He made Derek laugh.

He offered comfort, he respected Derek’s boundaries and had put his cat on Derek’s knee because he was scared he would have a second panic attack like he hadn’t sat on his knees with Derek talking him through it, reassuring him that he wasn’t dying even though it felt like his heart was beating out of his chest and he couldn’t breathe, that it would pass, he just had to breathe - and Derek had.

Stiles was the sort of guy you pointed at in the street and called a crazy person, he had fourteen cats and openly admitted he had spent time in psychiatric care, he spoke of his doctor in first name terms.

But he had Castle Gormenghast on his bedroom wall so it was one of the first thing that he could see when he first woke up.

Titus had represented freedom and yearning and being trapped in a future that was defined for you by other people.

Maybe Stiles did too.


	8. Chapter 8

The crow, Ligeia, followed the boy through the dark streets on powerful wingbeats as Peter shared her view from his vantage- his rain-slick coat hanging around his ankles over the edge of the building’s flat roof. Peter had had the terrible fear, one that he certainly could not explain, that the boy might go to a hospital before he led them onwards on their quest.

Peter caught the thought before it finished. He wasn’t a violent man, he was an English professor, he…

Ligeia swooped down and he had loved the joke of her name that the Seer had given her but, when did he start calling the boy a seer?  
It was getting hard to think beyond the kill.

Derek had loved a book. He remembered giving it to him, but the title was gone. He had known it once, he had, but it was gone like the wing beats of a crow.

The boy had carried it around with him, this brick of a paperback in his backpack or in his hand as he wandered around the house, but Peter couldn’t remember what it was called. He had known, he had, and Talia had had four children, hadn’t she? There was Derek and Max and Evie and Cora and… were there five?

What did it matter when they were dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

They would all be dead soon.

He would kill them for Lydia.

He could see her face, but why couldn’t he remember if her eyes were brown or blue. He couldn’t remember.

Couldn’t remember.

Couldn’t remember.

He clutched at his head and let the rain fall on the back of his neck as he tried to remember. Why couldn’t he remember?

He had seen her.

He had seen her somewhere.

Where had he seen her?

Seen her.

Ligeia was flying.

Hunting.

Searching.

He would finish it.

He would kill them all.

Then he could rest.

Then he wouldn’t need to remember.

He could rest me and forget.

That was a line of a poem but he couldn’t remember poem.

It bothered him that he couldn’t remember.

Why couldn’t he remember?

Nolan stopped outside a club, the neon sign flashing brilliant through the rain, and then Peter didn’t care that he didn’t remember any more. There was prey. He didn’t need to remember for that.

\---

Under Derek’s hands Stiles was a work of beauty as great as any of those that decorated his walls. He arched and gasped and grunted and the bruises on his face seemed to change colour under the electric light and he wanted to be more active but with the stitches and the cast Derek didn’t want to risk him hurting himself more.

He was splayed out on his chocolate brown sheets like a piece of jewellery and when Derek touched him he responded beautifully. He did not care to be touched on the scar on his chest but the rest of him was open, and he had come out of the bathroom like a young god, naked apart from a pair of cotton jockey shorts, and when he smiled at Derek he draped himself along the doorframe, “what do you think?”

He had tattoos on both biceps, the flowers on one and the fox on the other, but he also had a large red box on one thigh with Japanese symbols in it, and there was a vine curling around one shin but other than that the skin was bare. His left collarbone had four several lines of writing, possibly from a poem although at the time Derek noticed it it was too far to read and afterwards he didn’t bother to read it. On his back was a pair of curled black feathered wings to match the crows on his scar. His skin was pale but not unhealthy, and Derek wanted to put his hands all over it, highlighted by a pair of burgundy jockey shorts, that he shucked when he reached the bed.

“I think I want,” Derek said and his tongue felt swollen in his mouth he was so overwhelmed with desire. He ached with it, his cock hard and heavy in his own underwear.

What most delighted Derek was the spattering of beauty marks that covered him, there were none on his chest although two on his stomach and a handful over his back to match the triangle of them on his face that tormented Derek because it rendered him imperfect and he was lovely in his imperfection.

He enjoyed sex and the drag of Derek’s dry hands down his ribs, the rough pull of the hairs on his shins against Derek’s own.

Derek had had sex with men before, but never like this, in a bed, it was always quick fumbles in dark corners or rushed encounters in hotel rooms. He had experimented but the idea of lying in bed with someone, taking the time to explore and marvel and enjoy - that he had never done.

Stiles loved to kiss, to kiss as if he could, by very virtue of spit and spirit, become part of Derek and Derek was content to let him as his palms stroked the plains of his stomach, never reaching up to his nipples or down to the bowl of his pelvis. Like the song that played in the other room it was slow and sweet and Derek was softly sucking on his tongue, and he didn’t mind the way that Stiles raised his hand along his sternum, feeling the hairs crinkle and crunch there under the pads of his fingers.

Derek was a heavy weight between his thighs and that was where Stiles wanted him to stay forever. There was a curious mix of sensations, of skin and heat and weight and the velvet coverlet and crisp male hair and the wondrous sucking on his tongue and Stiles rocked up into it, into the answering bulge in Derek’s shorts and Derek let him.

He came with a gasp but Derek didn’t, he just raised his head, pulling away from the kiss by sucking out the lip and smiled, before he began to kiss along his jaw, his hands starting to work on the belt as Stiles lay boneless beneath him.

Derek pulled his jockey shorts down gently, Stiles flopping down after he had raised his hips to aid their removal, and then lowered his mouth to the evidence of Stiles’s orgasm. He had never done this before. He'd sucked men off before, but never like this, never after.

His tongue was hot and torturous as he slowly lapped away the sweat and semen staining his thighs and into the pubic hair, with long slow strokes and all Stiles could do was press the back of his hand to his eyes and feel as Derek lapped and hummed and his thumbs made cooing circles on his stomach.  
Stiles had never known anything like this.

He felt cherished and precious and it was too much and he wanted to be aroused because surely that was the point of this, but it was too soon and he was too tender, to open and all he could do was lie back and feel.

Derek nuzzled the flesh with his nose, even as he lapped and Stiles was falling, falling into this. How could he not when it felt so good and he felt so cherished and worshipped and Derek’s tongue was hot and soft and his thumbs firm in the divots of his hips? Stiles felt new under his hands even as his cock hardened and Derek looked up at him and smiled and began to use more determined licks, and his breath parted the dark curls and Stiles just arched and felt.

His hand, his right hand because his left was currently bearing down against the bridge of his nose- prevented from pressing on his bruises by his cast, was making scrabbling motions trying to find purchase in the bedspread but his own weight against it prevented it.

Derek opened his mouth and took the very head of his cock inside.

Stiles thought he might die.

He thought he might want to.

He wasn’t sure he hadn’t, but the image of Derek’s dark head was burned into his retinas. Derek splayed his hand on Stiles’s stomach and looked up at him and chuckled and Stiles wanted to arch, to pull back, to laugh, to cry and he didn’t know what to do so he simply trusted Derek and against his own instinct moaned.

Stiles knew, rather than could see, Derek smile.

Derek got up then, and standing dropped his own underwear to the floor. Stiles didn’t know whether to look, whether he was meant to, what he was supposed to say, suddenly comments really didn’t feel appropriate and Derek just leaned forward, ignoring his obvious inability to make a decision and smiled against his lips fondly then kissed him.

Stiles knew how to react to that.

He kissed him back.

He was aware of Derek reaching into the bedside cabinet but really didn’t care. He was aware that Derek was hard against his stomach, and that it was larger than he had thought it would be, and he couldn’t see it and he wasn’t sure that didn’t make it worse. But Derek was hard and hot and he pressed down and Stiles wanted this, didn’t he?

He wanted Derek to put his mouth back. He was quite sure of that.

Derek’s mouth burned a trail down the side of his face, along his neck, which felt much better than it should have, chuckling against his nipples but lavishing them with attention, which confused Stiles because he wasn’t a girl and you kissed a girl’s nipples. Derek sucked on one of them and Stiles wasn’t confused any more, he just didn’t care. It felt that wondrous and new he would be quite content if Derek never stopped.

He didn’t hear the cap of the lube being popped open, but he was aware of Derek’s finger suddenly being cold and slick and there. It felt good so he relaxed into it.

Derek lowered his mouth the same time he slipped his finger inside Stiles causing him to buck up into that hot warmth with the surprise. Stiles just opened his mouth a little more and groaned. So Derek fingered him and bobbed his head and Stiles just surrendered to those strong fingers, he was quite sure there was two, when had that happened? did he care? and that wonderful mouth.

He reacted with a soft scream he couldn’t quite control as Derek touched some place inside of him that ended the world.

But Derek didn’t stop, even as he thrummed and panted and clutched at the coverlet Derek raised his hips in his hands and pressed something hard and blunt and larger than fingers against his ass and then with after rolling on a condom and slicking his cock with more lube Derek pushed inside him.

It didn’t last long. They were both primed for a quick release. Derek pushed inside him and just sat there, trying to control his breathing and his hair fell across his forehead and he looked a little lost for a moment so Stiles reached up to touch his face and then he moved.

Derek came on the upstroke and Stiles seeing his control waver, seeing a hearty red flush spread across his chest and throat came too.

When he caught his breath, and Stiles was wondering how me managed to stay so calm, Derek’s thumb wiped away tears from his cheeks he hadn’t known he’d shed and hushed him, and tangled together, covered in sweat and saliva and semen, Stiles slowly fell asleep with Derek’s thigh a hard length pressing him into the Manchester as Derek softly sang under his breath, but Stiles didn’t recognise the song.  
\---

The club that Nolan had gone into was called “ _The Darkest Dungeon_ ” and was, Peter discovered when he entered - waved in by the bouncer as if a man in a velvet duster and red vinyl gloves was not a little strange in and of itself - a sex club. Such places were usually only open to members but it was possible the bouncer simply did not care, or was not paid enough, or made the decision that Peter was a member based on how he was dressed.

The building was a repurposed brick warehouse, not entirely unlike the one that the Seer lived in, but the ground floor had been turned into a dance floor with a bar that was the only well lit part of the entire area. There were bodies gyrating and undulating against each other to the thudding beat, trying to pull Peter against them as he made his way through the crowd to follow Nolan, who had taken a metal staircase up to the second floor. It wasn’t closed off as being for private parties, but judging by the couples that were going upstairs it provided enclaves for people to have sex, or, judging by the way some of the dancers moved, as if they were made of elastic with no bones to prevent them moving without injury, take Brunski’s drug.

Nolan crossed through the enclaves, separated as they were by curtains, but as Peter followed him he could hear the grunts and groans of the couples engaged in sexual acts behind the curtains, to a set of double doors with cushioned velvet. There was a second bouncer there, but he waved Peter in with the same bored _laissez faire_ as the first.

This was the dungeon.

The walls were lined with huge TVs, showing the same video that Peter did not pay attention to, tracking Nolan. There was a stage upon which a woman, affixed to a large wooden X was being flogged as groups gathered on vinyl couches watched. One man in a suit was being fellated by a girl wearing only a rubber micro-dress. Another woman had her breasts on display as a girl, perhaps as old as the seer, seemed to nurse.

Peter didn’t care.

They were not prey.

The people on the couches were watching the flogging in a way that suggested boredom. The girl was beautiful in her submission and her pale skin flushed beautifully, the whip turning her skin white then red with a delightful crack, and the man doing the whipping took the opportunity to run his gloved hand, leather Peter thought, down her back between each strike. Her blonde hair was braided into a rope that that hung over her shoulder and between her breasts, and she was naked but for a blindfold and she was enjoying being a show, being struck, and occasionally her dom made sure she was okay, asking twice in the six strikes it takes Peter to walk to the Authorised Personnel only door that she knows which strike they’re on in a low murmur, in lieu of asking whether she wanted to continue.

“Peter,” he heard the voice faintly, over the noise of the flogger and the submissive’s whimpers, the wet smacking of the girl performing fellatio and the humming of the woman being nursed. He turned his head to wonder who had called him. There was no one here who could know him. The seer had called him Crow and Crow he was but someone had called him by name.

It was a coincidence, he decided, the woman called for someone who shared his name.

He reached the door when he heard it again, a laugh then “Peter.”

He stopped with his hand on the handle, and turned his head, was he being called then the woman who had called him laughed. It was so faint and quiet despite the noises of the room and the faint thudding of the music on the floor below where the soundproofing wasn’t good enough to lock out the sound completely.

The floor was tiled and his foot had found a drain and it felt weird under his feet, loose and rocking in its cradle but none of the people in the room even seemed to notice him, even as he paused, looking for the woman who called him.

She was on the television screens. It was a single video of some porn or another, played on repeat as background noise but when he started to pay attention he realised he had been wrong. It wasn’t porn, it was a couple having sex, but it wasn’t professional because the woman was calling for him, because he was the one filming her.

He and Lydia had often filmed themselves having sex, Lydia had something of an exhibitionist kink, but Peter hated the idea of other people being involved in their sex life so they recorded themselves, and the first time when they watched it back they had laughed and laughed because it wasn’t sexy, it was just the two of them seeming to wrestle, make weird noises and stranger faces.

In their years of marriage it had taken them some time to get the hang of it and record things that weren’t worth just recording over, or deleting straight from the digital camera they used.

Some of the recordings had been extreme, the two of them exploring their sexualities and how they intersected.

On the screen Lydia, his Lydia, his beautiful, dead Lydia was bound, unlike the girl on the Saint Andrew’s Cross she was suspended by Japanese bondage. Her forearms were tied together and hung from a hook in the ceiling they had added just for that purpose. The same rope, which was dark red to highlight against her skin, was looped around one ankle and held it aloft, but the rope was not quite long enough so that she stood on tiptoes of the one foot on the floor. Her breasts were loose and magnificent on her chest, rising and falling with her breath and held aloft and pert by the position of her arms.

She was blindfolded and she was asking for him.

There was no way that they could have these tapes. These recordings were on his laptop, left in his apartment when he went to visit his sister because Lydia insisted that work stay at home when they did visits like this. It meant that whoever had taken the tape had gone through his apartment, had logged onto his laptop and found his secret, private files, and then pasted them as noise in a sex club where strangers would watch them fuck.

Peter’s rage was so sudden and overwhelming he did not notice when Nolan, patched up, left the building.

\---

“Why this one?” Derek asked running his hand down the length of Stiles’ left arm. They were lying in Stiles’ bed, in a moment of calm between the passion that kept overflowing between them, hastily cleaned up with baby wipes because it wasn’t worth showering when sex would inevitably happen again between them. He was asking about the tattoos and post-coitally sated Stiles seemed inclined to answer him.

Despite the late October night, with both wind and rain whipping about the building outside, the bedroom was warm enough that they could lie only on the sheet with the blanket and manchester kicked to the bottom of the bed.

“My flowers?” Stiles asked, “rowan, the one with the orange berries, rejects magic, people used to hang a branch of it over their door and windows so evil spells couldn’t come in. The one with the red berries is hawthorn.”

“Like the novelist?” Derek asked.

“Nah,” Stiles grinned, “the branch is less wooden. Hawthorn was used to make magic stronger, so it’s a bit ironic that Hawthorn’s ancestor was a witch burner at Salem,” he continued, “the flowers in the middle are camellias and they were my mother’s favourite, but they’re also the flower that most countries associate with death, you give camellias as a grave gift. I don’t know where the white lily thing comes from, but traditionally it’s camellias. It’s also a Dumas novel, the Lady of the Camellias. I read it with my mom, so yeah, my flowers, they mean a lot and nothing, it’s kinda traditional for a magic user to be associated with them, so why not, I already had my fox by then and Alice,” he turned his arm to show the figure there, “so it was mostly to balance out my arms.”

“And what about this one?” Derek ran his hand over the red oblong on Stiles’ thigh with its kanji.

“That’s an _ofuda_ ,” Stiles said, “A Japanese talisman to prevent possession.”

“Is that something to worry about?” Derek had only just learned magic was real, he didn’t want to have to deal with demons.

Stiles was strangely intent when he answered, “not any more.” Derek suspected that there was a story there but he didn’t know what it was or how to ask without seeming invasive. That was my first tattoo, my dad signed off on it just before I turned seventeen.” He took a deep breath that he held in his chest like he was inhaling smoke from a cigarette or joint, letting it out in a slow loud breath, “Of course, once you get one tattoo, it’s hard to stop.”

Derek wanted to ask about the _ofuda_ , he wanted to ask why Stiles’ dad had let him get the ink when he was so young, and the design itself was quite large, perhaps as long as six inches, enough to poke through the leg of a pair of shorts certainly. “After that I got Alice, then the Fox, then my wings, then the design on my chest, that one was a bit of a rash decision, I was at a convention and I got to meet this amazing tattoo artist who offered me a time slot based on my art, if she could tattoo my designs on people she would ink me for free and that was the design we chose. She’s kinda famous in the tattoo world, Kira Yukimura, you might have heard of her.”

Derek admitted that he had not.

“Now, what about you, Mister? What does that ink on your back mean?” Stiles was a thing of beauty, splayed out on his sheets in the electric street light outside the floor to ceiling window, he was splattered with beauty marks, including one on the arch of his foot peeking through the design on his calf, it was a climbing vine reaching up for his knee. “If we’re trading stories.”

Derek rolled onto his side, curled loosely around Stiles’ warmth on the bed. “My family died when I was sixteen,” Derek said, “except my sister, Laura,” he paused,

“I called her my Fuschia,”

“For the character?” Stiles asked and Derek loved that he knew she was a character.

“Yeah, before the fire she was really skinny, not sick, just really thin, you could put your entire hand around her forearm, not just her wrist, she played sports and ate like a horse but she was just really skinny, and she had this dark hair, and when Uncle Peter gave me the book I saw her in Fuschia so I’d tease her about it. I bought her this yellow scarf, just like the character, she wore it everywhere. She pretended she hated it but she didn’t, it had these black birds on it, when…” he cut himself off as the lump in his throat threatened to suffocate him. “After the fire we were all we had left, just the two of us when we’d been part of a big family, we had the company, and lots of well-meaning “uncles” who just wanted to control the money, but there was just her and me against the world.” He couldn’t help how wistful and lost he sounded, “and triskeles, the symbol, it represents life and death and rebirth, that no matter how far someone fell it was cyclical, they would rise, and the opposite. It was to remind me that things changed no matter how much it felt like they wouldn’t.”

“This too shall pass,” Stiles murmured under his breath.

“Yeah,” Derek agreed.

“Do you want another one?” Stiles asked, “For your sister, I can call Kira, see if she can squeeze you in, she did a lot of mine, she’s really good.”  
“What would I have?” Derek asked, no one had asked him this, no one else had understood and now Stiles was seeing if his tattoo artist friend, who was clearly insanely talented, would do this for him.

“Fuschia,” Stiles answered, “what could it be but Fuschia? If you want I’ll sketch her but I don’t think mine will be a patch on what Peake did.”  
“She would have loved you,” Derek said, “Laura, she hated whoever I brought home, said they were interested in the money, but you, she would have loved.”

“I would have liked to meet her,” Stiles said, “she sounds like she was magnificent.”

“She was." He paused, licking his lips like the taste of Stiles was not still upon them. "Why can I talk about this with you?” Derek asked him, "is this more magic?"

Stiles' smile was a slow and soft thing, no less beautiful for how inappropriate it seemed to Derek. He as a line of silvery beauty in the moon and streetlight against the dark sheets, his easy nudity making him lovelier with the lines and pockets of coarse dark hair. "No," he said, "well, nothing I have done, I wouldn't know where to begin, I dream the future and can pull things from drawings I've made, I can enchant a tarot card to do what is on the image. I broke Jennifer's spell on you, but the only magic I've done on you is hand you a cat to calm you down. I think it's," there was a moment searching for the word, "consent is important and a love potion is not consent. This is," there was another brief pause, " _hitsuzen_ ," he said, "inevitability, the inevitable meeting of two beings which is comfortable and easy and not overworked. It's why we fit together so easily, we were always meant to be comfortable with each other. I've dreamt this part of you," he skimmed his knuckles down the line of Derek's ribs to his waist, "since I was a teenager, as soon as I figured out what my cock was for I damn near jerked it raw over this," he laughed, "I dreamed you, the universe sometimes makes things easy."

"Does that make me your soul mate?" Derek asked he found the idea uncomfortable.

"No," Stiles said with a laugh, "just that we were inevitably going to meet, what comes next is up to us."

That reassured Derek more than he wanted to admit, "is that why Jennifer came for me, because of you?"

"You underestimate your own role in this story," Stiles said, "she wanted you for you, not for me, she wanted me dead because," he paused again, "according to the woman who taught me, as much as we can be taught, there are two types of magic users, those that just want to keep their heads down and those who don't like that those other magic users exist. It's power, I guess," the sex had made him loquacious, willing to talk, "people don't like other people with power that they don't have, Jennifer, that's not her name, is old, and she doesn't like others with ability so when she finds them she kills them, or," he ran his bent fingers up the scar on his sternum, "or she tries."

\---

The woman who ran the Dungeon was called Victoria, and Peter realized quickly that she was the Victoria than Brunski had spoken of, she was an Amazon, statuesque and beautiful with her hair in a pixie cut dyed silver apart from black roots, and she had a stare like a gorgon. Although she wore a catsuit in red vinyl, exactly like his gloves, her arms were bare, but they were beautiful, and she stood inches above most of the club goers in her heels as she moved through the crowd.

The music thudded and thumped as a man shouted " _you can't take it, you can't take it, you can't take this away from me_ ," Peter was singing something else under his breath, _"With talented breezes that blow off your hat with a sneer As a man I've never been much for talking to I'm as open as the door in her house that leads to her room And when the color goes out of my eyes, she's usually too"_

From the pocket of his duster he pulled the syringe that he had taken from Brunski, the one that he had filled with Silver, and brushing up behind her he pushed the needle into the skin of her waist and depressed the plunger, still singing under his breath he continued through the crowd allowing her to fall behind him. If they saved her, if they could, she would have suffered through the hands of the drug she was selling, openly behind the counter little sheets of paper passed over with liquor, it would count, but Peter didn't think they'd save her. She didn't deserve it.

He couldn't hear the crowd if she collapsed, he could only hear the thudding, thumping music as the man shouted-sang " _head like a hole, black as your soul, I'd rather die than give up control."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chances of me hitting wordcount by the end of the month are slim  
> i had too many bad days [where i couldn't write because of illness] and now unless i write 3k a day i'm not going to hit target [she says after writing 3k today]  
> so yeah, I'm running behind.
> 
> also - remember that this is a nano which means i'm making changes as i work, most of them you won't notice, a word here or there, but they ARE happening so don't get worried, but i would rec checking the end of the last chapter before you start the new one in case i've added a scene to make the 1k of cut content not look like i'm skiving
> 
> also if you see a mistake point it out, I'm not infallible and I'm not using a beta for this - there are probably loads of them and if i don't know i can't fix them


	9. Chapter 9

Baba Yaga’s was a Polish restaurant in the area of Beacon Hills between the affluent area, Oak Creek, and the East End’s shopping district. It was the sort of place that everyone knew but no one had eaten there, everyone knew someone who had, and that the food was barely edible, but it had been open for over twenty years and despite never really having any customers it seemed to flourish. It was built in the East Coast style, with decorative buttresses and a facade of concrete masquerading as the limestone of Georgian Architecture. Instead of a large shop style window it had a front of wooden mullions and glass panes such as would be expected of a Victorian shop front and a painted fascia declaring the name of the restaurant and the legend “tastes just like grandma” which when Peter had visited Beacon Hills before the fire had always made him laugh.

Baba Yaga was a famous witch of Slavic history, known particularly for her cannibalistic tendencies, so even if it hadn't been intended as a joke Peter had always found it funny.

The top floor of the building, which had three floors and a flat roof, with a skylight and airconditioning units, was lit, despite the late hour, but something about it suggested to Peter that it wasn’t just the staff cleaning up, because he had followed Ligeia’s visions of Nolan, Kate’s boy, here. He had entered through the back metal door and Peter had walked there.

It felt like there were golden threads tugging at him, pulling him to the restaurant, although he didn't realize at first that that was where he was going, kicking through puddles and occasionally running his hands through his hair to slick the rain from his face.

He was enjoying the rain, but the song in his head was nonsense.

The more he killed the more he forgot and the lighter he became, and it terrified him, but even the fear felt distant and unknown.

He knew he was scared, but it was like it was someone else’s emotion.

He yearned to return to his grave but he wasn't done, not yet.

There was one left, Kate’s boy, and he was in that building with its old world facade and it’s older name.

Peter climbed the back of the building, away from the windows, to the flat roof where the rainwater sat in dips and hollows in the tarmacadamed roof. The skylight was like a beacon in the dark, the windows closed against the winter and the rain but it presented a temptation of warmth and light in the cold night with its persistent rain.  
Although Peter was sure that they could not hear him he sang under his breath, _“It wasn't the rain That made no difference Nervously drumming on: Run away_ _But I want the guilt to get me Thoughts to wreck me Preying on my mind_ ” he couldn't remember the name of the song, or where he had heard it, but there was a picaresque feeling about him, knowledge falling away the more he killed, but he had to, he had to kill those responsible, if he killed them he could make amends, he could go back, he could go to some place where he remembered, where it didn’t matter that the names were gone, he could remember the curve of her neck and the pillowy softness of her tummy under his hands and the sound of her laughter, and her singing tunelessly in the shower loud and getting the words wrong, if he remembered those things did it matter that he couldn't remember her name?

He remembered her.

He did.

He remembered her hair and did it matter if he couldn't remember the color of her eyes.

He remembered that she kicked off her shoes by the front door and he almost always tripped over them.

Did it matter that he couldn't remember her name?

I carry your heart, he remembered, I carry it in my heart, that was what the Seer had said to him, but he couldn't remember why it hurt that the Seer had said it, those were her words.

He’d kill them, he’d finish the job and then he could rest.

 

There was a large conference table in the room below, which was some kind of banqueting suite and Peter could not recognize any of the people there except Nolan, he sat to the left of the head of the table, where an old man in an old army jacket held court. He looked familiar but with the way he was losing memories, Peter could not have said who he was. He spoke like his teeth were too large and he had to force the words out through them.

Stood behind him was a woman with long dark hair, she wore a grey jumper dress with a peach colored blouse and she had her hand on Nolan's injured shoulder and it looked as if she was squeezing.

Nolan looked like a junkie desperately in need of a fix, the color drained entirely from his face and he was leaning against the table. Whoever had bandaged him up had done a slapdash job because it was clear that the blood had soaked it through.

Every chair at the table was except those which had been for the people that Peter had already killed, Valet, Brunski, the red-haired woman at the club and Kate.  
“Someone is interfering with our enterprise,” the grey-haired man said, his hair was an arc around the back of his head and he looked like he had been disturbed from his bed and dressed haphazardly, “and is removing lieutenants in our cause,” he spoke using the register of war, like it was a war that he was commanding and this room with its table was his centre of command. “We are very close to our goal.

“Your goal,” one of the men, a wall of muscle in a tee shirt that looked at least a size too small, said, “our goals are a lot less,” he paused, “widespread. Beacon Hills if more than enough for us.”

“And that is why, Ennis,” the grey-haired man said, “everyone elected to follow me and my plans.”

“And that had nothing to do with your pet witch,” the man who spoke was about the same age as Nolan, handsome in a blunt way with dark hair and eyes, a latin look, but sticking out ears and a very plump mouth.

The woman smiled and her hand clutched tighter on Nolan's shoulder, “Gabriel," she said in a purring tone, but her voice was soft and high pitched like a girl’s, “you know I don’t like that word.” There was a threat in the way she said it, but she sounded like a schoolmarm correcting a naughty child.

“Like I give a flying fuck what you do or don't like,” Gabriel, the man who addressed her said, “I do my job, I've made sure we get paid and problems disappear, you have no quarrel with me, witch.”

“Continue to call me that, Gabriel, and I will have quarrel with you,”

“Oh no,” Gabriel said, his tone heavily sarcastic, “the witch is angry with, perhaps she’ll curse my cock...” the words cut off as his face went pale, his breath suddenly gone from his lungs- like she had pulled it from him.

“Jennifer,” the old man said, “with our numbers dwindling infighting is not necessary,” the young man was going purple, and at his command, the spell ended and he sucked in a loud breath.

“Gabe,” one of the blonde twins said, “you know better to poke her. He was disdainful. “It just makes these meetings interminable, you don't like her, she doesn't like you, we’ve got the memo.” His twin laughed but said nothing.

“Someone is making a play for our territory," one of the two women at the table said, she was a black woman but fine featured and her slimness seemed more athletic than aesthetic. She had her feet, in a pair of tennis shoes, on the table and rocked back in her so her chair was on two legs. The other black woman was darker skinned with naturally curly hair, she wore a leather jacket and looked like she was late for her bed and was more interested in sleep than whatever the meeting was about, “let Kate’s whore tell us what he saw and we can take it from there.”

“Someone killed my daughter,” the grey-haired man said, “I don't want this to be a simple kill, I want to find out who sent this person and find the person who sent them and go there and scorch the earth of everything they touched, destroy their enterprise and their families.”

“And to think earlier this evening you were complaining about her," one of the twins said.

So the man, Peter noted, was Kate’s father.

“You’d deny me a little paternal grief,” the man said, “she was a waste of space but she was still mine,” he said in a low growl that Peter had to concentrate to hear clearly.

“And that’s the issue," the second black woman said, “that someone messed with something that is your’s, Gerard, you don't like to lose.”

The man’s smile was a grimace where his skin seemed to stretch over his skull. “Does anyone?” he asked her.

“Can we get this over with?” the muscled man asked, “we all have things we’d much rather be doing this late. You," he pointed at Nolan tell us who you saw, who killed Valet, Brunski, Victoria, and Kate?”

Peter opened the skylight and dropped down onto the table, landing with one foot, one knee and both hands, before standing up in a fluid motion. “I did,” he said blithely, “and if you give me the fool I’ll be on my way.”

Everyone at the table except the old man and the witch pulled guns on him, “how tiresome," he sighed, “and cliche," Peter said.

The witch spoke at the same time, “as I live and breathe," she said with a certain amount of glee, “a Corvian.” Peter didn't know what the word meant but it was clear she was referring to him, and her gaze was desirous, and she licked her lips as she watched him.

“Why should I give you him?” the old man asked, talking over the woman as if she hadn't spoken at all.

“Because, because, because,” Peter said spreading his hands, “he’s not much use to anyone, flunky little pretty thing, and the bed he warmed is now empty, so why bother, I can kill him for you and be on my way.” He walked along the table, the glassware crunching under his feet.

The old man stood up, pushing his chair behind him with his knees. “Kill him,” for a second Peter thought that it was a question to him but it was a command for those sitting at the table, who started firing.

The old man and the witch stepped back but Peter just stood there, letting the bullets rock him, the windows on either side of him shattered so the shards of glass fell like stars in the electric light, “look at him," the witch said, “just look.”

“What is he?" the old man asked watching as the bullets tore through Peter but clearly did nothing to him, he showed no pain and when the bullets were done with him they tore through the other people at the table.

Nolan without the witch holding him in place, tried to scrabble under the table, but Peter reached down and pulled him back by the waistband of his jeans, “see what you've done," he told him, and then with his other hand he pulled away the man’s throat with a shower of blood across his face and coat.

With him dead Peter let the body fall to the ground and turned, almost everyone in the room was dead, although Peter could not claim his actions were entirely to blame, they had fired at him, in the resulting bullet storm they had destroyed each other.

“He’s a Corvian,” the witch repeated, tugging the old man towards the door and it was as he turned, going towards the door that Peter recognized him.

“Mayor Argent,” he said with some realization, “everything is clear now,” he tilted his head, his motions becoming more and more like those of Ligeia.

“That paltry little fox summoned a Corvian," the witch said, “I had not thought," she stopped, her face although pretty had a cruel slant, “breaking my spells and taking my control of Hale, and a fucking Corvian," she spoke with envy and hatred, and Peter assumed that she was speaking of the Seer, but the rest of it meant nothing to him. “Do you realize what this is?”

Peter stood on the table watching as the people around him groaned and died.

“Why doesn't he die?” the old man, Argent, asked.

“Because he’s already dead,” the witch sounded triumphant and zealous, as if whatever it was that Peter was it filled her with delight, “come back for some purpose and until he finishes he can't return to his grave, but the longer he is out of it the harder it gets for him to go back.”  
“and?” Argent said.

“Think of it," she purred, “a soldier in your war that cannot die, that has no memories of who he was, who will serve, who will be everything you want him to be, strong as the grave, but as delicate as the frost fingers of death. A Corvian,"

Peter watched them with baleful eyes, he did not care what it was that they spoke of but they were speaking of him and that might be important.

“and how do you recommend that we do that?” Argent asked her.

“Oh that should be easy enough," she answered, running her hand up Gerard’s arm, “we kill the one who summoned him, and we control the Crow," there was nothing of warmth in her smile, “and we control the Corvian. I’ve spent centuries trying to summon one," she said, “and that feckless fucker manages it," she shook her head, “I was never one to look a gift crow in the wings.”

Behind him one of the lieutenants groaned, one of the twins realizing what had happened to his brother and trying to heft himself up to look but when Peter turned back the two of them were gone.

It was done, he told himself.

He could rest. So he left them, the dead and the dying with the old man watching on.

—-

The church loomed over the graveyard like a disappointed parent, it’s architectural flourishes and accents were dripping rain in splats and rivulets that poured in streams over the paved walkways around it, through the denuded roses bushes cut back for the winter, and the ivy that covered the west wall, through the buttresses and mullions of the pseudo-gothic style that had been so popular when they built it. Instead of gargoyles, it was angels that lurked on its architraves, leaning out over their brethren, carved on graves and imploring or mourning, more than one was chained with stone to the tombs that they adorned.

There was a large monument to the Hale family, a memorial of sorts, a large angel, naked and bound sat upon the plinth. It was a recreation of Ithuriel, who had cast humanity out of paradise, his burning sword, the stone of the blade pitted and scarred and slick wet with rain, pointed low between his naked legs.

“I’m ready,” Peter said, spreading his hands and waiting for the grave to take him back. “I’m ready," he repeated. "Please.”

He fell to his knees, the concrete hard and painful on his knees in a way that the other violences had not, he felt the reverberation of it through all of his joints, and his black coat, torn to tatters from the deluge of bullets hanging like feathers around him, he let his head fall back, “I’ve done it, they’re dead, I’m ready, I've done what I was supposed to do.”

There was no answer, the rain just ran down the cheeks of the angel like he was weeping, like he mourned the children named on the graves, but Peter didn’t.

He read their names but could not remember them.

They were gone from his memory and if he could go back, if he could crawl back into his grave he would remember, he could remember the name of the woman with the red hair who sat on the swing with her hair streaming behind her and the sun shining through her yellow dress, with a single shoe hanging from her toe.

It was strange how that was the thing he remembered the best, he remembered that day, the smell of it, the warmth of that sun on their skin and the sound of her laughter, dark and throaty with the promise of forever and comfort and all the things he was denied.

Why wouldn't the grave take him back?

He wanted nothing more than to go back.

He was done.

His memory was falling apart and all that was left was the urge to kill, to find those who hurt others and make them hurt.

But they were all gone.

He had killed them all.

Why was Ligeia sat on the wrought iron fence watching him, why wasn't she letting him back into his grave?

He wanted to go back.

He had done what the Seer had told him to do. He had killed them all. He had walked into that restaurant and killed the boy, he had killed Kate, who had stood outside of the fire laughing. He had killed Brunski who had brought the chemicals that made the house burn. He had killed Valet who had made sure no one escaped the fire. He had killed the men that had raped her, the woman with the red hair, he had killed them for touching her. They were gone. They were dead. So why was he still here?

Ligeia cawed and her voice still sounded like laughter.

He just wanted to go back.

If he could go back he would remember.

He would know her name and more than the smell of her hair.

The Seer would know, he decided, the Seer would have answers.

The Seer would know how to put him back in his grave.

The Seer could set him free.

 

—-

 

The Seer’s apartment was in an old industrial building, the top floor of it had been turned in to the apartment and studio, with huge windows and a flat roof on the lower floor that served as a balcony for the upper building, it was there that Peter went first, on the opposite side to the fire escape he had used to enter before.  
As he looked into the window, that was bisected over the two floors of the loft, both the main floor and the mezzanine, but he could see the bedroom where the Seer was sleeping, twined around another man like they were a pair of socks.

Peter ached as he looked at them. For a moment he felt the warmth of her, of his beautiful girl, and the soft way she breathed, and the snuffling sound she made when she turned over and her lack hurt him almost physically.

He wanted that.

He wanted that closeness that the seer shared with that dark-haired man who Peter felt like that he should know but he did not.

On the flat roof of the building, there was a heavy metal door that was propped slightly open, not enough that it was obvious to anyone who was not looking down on the building. It was intended for him, he realized so that even asleep the seer had made plans for him.

Just inside the door was another coat, black and knee length folded over and sat on a pet crate. There was an envelope sat on the coat.

He lifted it and pulled out the letter inside.

_“Crow. This is Pangur Ban. Can you please bring him to my father this address, he needs the protection.”_

There was a large white cat, short haired and scarred up, with paws that were much larger than his frame, as if he had never grown into his potential. He had eyes like balefire, green and perceptive and he butted his head against the cage, purring loudly, like a jackhammer, as Peter pulled on the new coat.

He stuffed the letter into his pocket, screwing it up before he unlatched the cage and lifted the cat, who was as heavy as his paws suggested that he might be, and the cat butted his head up against Peter’s jaw, still making the deep purr that made his entire body vibrate. It wouldn’t be that much of a hardship to do this favor for the seer, and when he woke up he could be asked.

If he delivered the cat to the seer's father then the seer would owe Peter a favor.

But the seer had a painting on the wall of the woman that Peter remembered, maybe he even knew her name.

—-

The clock read Seven Oh Two when Noah unlocked the front door to his small apartment. When Stiles had moved out he had sold the family home, which had been in a part of town that had been gentrified in Mayor Argent’s campaign to make the area where his son lived more prestigious when his son hated him and refused to move, it had gained him enough money to buy this small apartment, which had a single bedroom and a box room that was just large enough for a single bed but that he used as his study, a joined kitchen living area and a bathroom that adjoined his small bedroom with it’s built in furniture, and helped Stiles buy the loft where he lived with his army of cats.

He hung up his rain cloak and cap on the hook by the door, having shaken off the worst of the water before he had come into the building, and then sat on a painted stool, something Stiles had made for him when he was a child that Noah treasured, to untie his shoes and then stretched out his feet in their neat black socks.

He sat back with his back against the coats and scratched at his chest sure that he was far too old for Finch’s bullshit but Stilinski’s weren't anything if they weren't stubborn.

She couldn't fire him because if she did there would be an investigation because he was as canny as she was in that sort of manipulation so he never did anything that would get him fired in a justified fashion, so she was determined to get him to quit, but he just wouldn’t.

It was more bullshit than anyone should have to deal with.

And he was lonely.

He missed Claudia fiercely although he did his best to see his son as often as he could, at least once a week, he never got the opportunity to go to the graveyard where Claudia was buried because Finch’s shifts were awful and he was tired.

He was still sitting there, lamenting his stubbornness, and wondering if he shouldn’t just quit when there was a rapping at the door.

When he was on nights he made a point to sleep before work, so he would never go to bed before noon, that meant he wasn't woken by the street noises outside his window of people going to work, but sometimes people got through the main door of the building to rap on the door, sometimes it was other officers investigating crimes in the area. He stood up turned and checked the peephole before he opened the door and didn't recognize the man stood there in his black coat who had a white cat in his arms. He did recognize the cat though.

It was still dark out so he wondered why his son had sent a man that Noah did not know to bring him one his cats, Pan, who Stiles sent to his dad when he worried about him and didn't want him to be alone.

Noah opened the door, and seeing the opportunity, Pangur Ban, who Noah had always called Pan, jumped down and ran into the apartment. The man, now that Noah could see him, looked awfully familiar, handsome, with a small neatly trimmed beard around his mouth, but his black hair was slicked back with rain and there was mud on the shins of his black pants. He was wearing a pair of red vinyl gloves against the cold, and despite the dark clothes that he wore he looked broken.  
Noah told himself that was why he had invited the stranger inside.


	10. Chapter 10

Perhaps it was the persistent sense of nagging familiarity or the aching loss that the man at the door wore like a coat that saw Noah let him inside, and sit him down at his old-fashioned table with the folded piece of cardboard under one of the legs - Noah was unsure if it was the floor that was uneven or the metal table leg, but it was certainly one of the two - and share his hot chocolate with him.

He looked lost, worrying the cup in his hands, turning it around and around whilst Noah leaned against the kitchen cabinets and pretended to be unaware of Pan lapping at his chocolate noisily behind him.  
Of all the cats that had adopted Stiles as an easy mark Noah liked Pan the best, he was unobtrusive, and apart from his purring which sounded like the engine of a motorcycle, quiet and the two of them maintained a quiet communion of minding their own business until Pan decided whatever it was that kept him staying with Noah was done and made his merry way, full of premium cat food and whatever he could help himself to of what Noah cooked for himself, like the hot chocolate, back to Stiles’ loft.

Noah knew that Pan didn't like people so if he let the man carry him he couldn’t be more than just a lost man who was doing his son a favour.  
He seemed baffled by the kindness of the cup of hot chocolate though.  
Noah had a moment’s recollection, stirred perhaps by the persistent nagging that he knew this man, that he had seen him before, that as a child it was cruelty that undid a person, but as an adult it was kindness.

Perhaps no one had been kind to him in a long time.

It was not unlike Stiles to adopt strays, he had a loft full of cats that proved that, and considering how the man's clothes were torn and ragged, even if his wool coat looked new, perhaps that was what he was, but he was so familiar.

They shared the kitchen in silence, neither drinking the hot chocolate that Noah had made. 

“I should go," the man said finally, “I don't want to intrude.”

“Do you know where I know you from?” Noah asked.

“I don’t remember you," the man said, his voice quiet and his blue eyes fixed on the pattern of the tabletop, the swirl and the few bubbles on the top of the hot chocolate.

The man was very handsome, with a sharpness to his feature that suggested a little cruelty but he looked lost and open, like he might at any moment shatter and the only thing holding him together was his bewildered temperament.

“Do you remember your name?” Noah asked him.

The man looked surprised as if no one had ever asked him that before,

“Peter," he said quietly, “my name is Peter.” His voice sounded rough and unused, the sounds almost swallowed as he talked.

“Peter Hale," Noah exclaimed realising where he knew the face, and how different the man looked in motion as opposed to the photographs on the murder boards that covered his box room. He had used the room to piece together everything about the fire, and this man’s photo was on the board. The problem was that Peter Hale was dead.

Peter Hale had died ten years before.

And Peter Hale was sat at Noah’s kitchen table looking exactly as he had when he had died. 

Noah tried to step back but the counter was at his back and there was nowhere to go. 

It was Mischief Night, he told himself, this was a trick. He was being pranked. This was Finch doing her worst, she had hired a look alike, she was trying to get him to quit. If he checked himself into Eichen then she could let him go and there wouldn’t be an investigation. So hiring a man who looked like one of the victims of the Hale fire.

But it was Stiles who had sent him to Noah.

He had carried Pan, one of the most stand offish of Stiles’ army of cats, across town for no other reason than Stiles had asked him, and hadn’t put him in the crate which Stiles usually used, and Stiles might prank his father but it was never cruel.

The cat trusted him and that was why Noah let him inside.

“How?” Noah asked. He knew he accepted it. He just didn’t know why he accepted it. It had been a horrible night, the persistent rain and the violent and hyperbolic murder of Valet, pinned to Argent’s billboard, then the accident that killed Kate de Silva, even if the wound in her stomach looked like a gunshot if the medical examiner said it was an accident then it was an accident. 

“I don't know,” Peter said simply.

Noah had been certain that Valet had been involved in the Hale fire, and he was linked to de Silva, and Peter appearing when they had died was probably not coincidental.

“Why?” Noah had not moved past questions yet, his entire mind was like the ringing of a bell in that it shimmered and the noise drowned out everything else.

Peter shrugged.

There was another question there, one that was at the tip of Noah's tongue but that he did not want to ask, because he wasn’t sure what he would do if he got the answer he was pretty sure that would happen. If he asked about Valet Peter might tell him what he suspected and then he would have to act.

Noah was tired, and he had spent ten years fixed on that crime, on proving that the fire was arson because it seemed everyone in control just wanted it swept under the carpet and people had died, three of them children. One had only been a few months older than Stiles, his own child, and two of them were babies.

If Peter had killed Valet and arranged de Silva’s accident did Noah really want to hold him accountable, but Noah was an officer of the law, he had taken oaths to protect and to serve the populace. He was supposed to take murderers into custody. He was a good cop, one of the few, he should be putting handcuffs on this man on the very suspicion that he had killed Valet.

“I don’t know,” Peter said and even though it had been moments it had felt like years.

Pan broke the moment by butting up against Noah’s face, purring away like a truck’s engine and white fur around his face covered with chocolate. Noah reached over and scratched the cat under his ear.  
Peter stood up, lifting his cup and moving across the kitchen to put it into the sink, and Pan yowled at him, twisting up against Peter’s arm. Peter turned to scratch at the cat and in doing so his naked fingers brushed up against Noah’s in the cat’s fur.

It was a cataclysm.

Noah’s memories crashed into Peter like a tide. He could smell the fire in his nostrils, the smoke and the dry heat of it, the crack and pop of wooden supports and the sweat leathery smell of burned meat, and the woman who lay half in the fire, where she had dragged herself out, with burns in long strips across her skin, but her clothes were torn in places other than the burns. There was blood all over her, and her thighs were coated in it, flickering in the firelight, and her hair cut away to her head, ripped out with skin and her face was covered in cuts in bruises. 

He had taken her hand and she had cried out at the pain of it but clung to his grip even though it was clear her fingers were broken. "Peter!” she had screamed and he had tried to tell her.

He had sat with her in the ambulance, telling the officers she was the best chance to get a statement but he knew it had been a lie. She was dying, driven mad by the pain and what had happened to her, and even looking at her Noah knew what had been done, how they had hurt her. He had held her hand and talked to her, telling her about his son and his exploits so she wouldn't hear the paramedics as they cursed and tried to help, but knew it was only a matter of time. She was dying and they would try but it was hopeless.

She thought that he was Peter.

He didn't want to tell her otherwise.

If even a moment's hope was enough to keep her alive long enough for them to save her.

Her legs were amputated, one mid shin the other mid-thigh where the beam had fallen across the meat of her legs. One of her arms was held in traction and the other, with fingers splinted, wouldn't let go of Noah's hand.

They had tried so hard but it wasn’t enough, and they knew it too, but still, they tried.

He sat with her all night and well into the next day, having one of the uniforms tell Claudia where he is. She didn't seem to listen but during one of the few times he left her, because the doctors had bussed him out of the room, she had told the doctors that his son was to have her heart. That she wanted him to have it.

She called him Peter, the fire having blinded her and scorched her throat and lungs, so her voice was a whisper but she lapsed in and out of consciousness she'd forget where she was and she’d call him Peter and he’d listen, he talked to her, he talked about nonsense, about the way Claudia made pancakes, or the hole in the toe of his sock that his toe had worked his way through. He talked about the squeak in his new shoes, and how stiff new jeans were when they were first washed. He talked about the news of the day. He didn't talk about the fire.

He didn't talk about the dispatches that the uniforms brought him, the updates of what happened at the fire, and how devastated the two survivors, barely more than children themselves were, he didn't go to them he sat at her bedside and he talked, distracting her until she faded, and he held her hand until she died.

He hadn’t known that she would give Stiles her heart.

He had done it because it was the only thing he could do, there was no alternative because the alternative was helping at the fire, helping them excavate the bodies of children from what they would call an accidental fire.

The memories crashed like a tsunami, an eternal instant where he was back in the hospital with smoke in the folds of his clothes and the sharp smell of antiseptic and the beep beep beep of the machines and her crying out Peter’s name.

It was clear from the way Peter stumbled back, into the kitchen table knocking it flying out of his way as Pan moved out of the way in a white streak, that Peter saw the memories too.

Peter clutched at his chest as if his heart might leap from his chest at what he saw.

“You stayed,” he said, “after everything, you stayed.” There was admiration in his tone, awe and horror, “you," there were no words, “I don't even remember her name,” Peter told him, “but you were there, you stayed.”

“You need to see this," Noah said and walked across the apartment to the box room, the door of which he always kept tightly closed, and showed him the murder boards he had created after ten years of investigation.

There were three boards, clear plastic upon which photos and documents had been stuck and linked with strange and coloured lines. “Kate de Silva set the fire," Peter said, “she got accelerants from Brunski and brought her pet, Nolan, with her so that she would have it over him. She used Valet to make sure that no one got out. She worked for a collective, most of the criminal underworld of Beacon Hills was united under one person, Mayor Argent. He was selling Silver through Valet and laundering the money through a club called Darkest Dungeon.” His tone was calm and even like he was reciting figures from a ledger that he had nothing to do with. 

“They got the Silver from someone they called The Chemist," Peter tapped the question mark on the board, “but Brunski was cutting it and turning it from drops into tabs, Valet was using the prostitutes and street kids to distribute it, but it was sold over the counter in the club as well. I don't think it will be any more.”

“Can you prove any of this?" Noah asked.

Peter just laughed, it was a slow and joyless sound.

“I don't know why they set the fire,” he said, “Kate was Argent's daughter, she used the name de Silva so no one would know, perhaps she was illegitimate, but she liked violence and fire, maybe,” he laughed again “won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?”   
Noah recognised the reference, it was famous and he remembered Stiles telling him the story, at dinner waving a chicken nugget on his fork as he talked, animated and delighted at the story. The King of England, Henry something or other was involved in a row with some high ranking church official and he was heard to exclaim “won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest," and four knights, determined to curry favour, killed the priest to please him. Noah couldn't remember what happened next but Stiles had told him, and a while later the two of them had laughed at the reference when it appeared in an episode of Blackadder that they had watched together, laughing loudly at the character’s peccadilloes and catastrophes. So Noah did understand what it was that Peter was saying, that perhaps Mayor Argent had made a comment about Talia and that Kate had taken it as a kill order, but it was just as likely it was deliberate.

The Mayor had commanded the death of his predecessor and it was the missing piece of Noah’s research, he had known that someone had financed the original foray into dealing Silver, but now he knew who had done it and how, he had names to put with shadowy question marks which haunted him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Even if he could arrest them between DA Whittemore and Finch it would be swept under the carpet again, just as it had been the first time.

“Are you hungry?” Noah asked Peter, “I used to drink when everything was fucked,” he didn't curse often, unlike Stiles whose first words had been a profanity and had never stopped since, “but after my wife's death I lost myself,” Peter snorted out a laugh suggesting that whatever it was that Noah had done it was nothing in comparison to what Peter had done when his red haired lover had died. He had left his grave and left a swathe of murder in his wake, so whatever it was that Noah had done it was inconsequential in comparison. “I had to look after Stiles," he noticed Peter tasting the name, spelling it out in his mouth silently, “and he was," he paused, “I couldn't afford to drink, I," he paused again, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I have a box of frozen waffles and some heart healthy syrup and well," he shrugged, “I might even be able to scrounge up a pair of pants that will fit you, that are dry and not mud all over.”

“You and your son are very kind,” Peter said.

Noah smiled to himself, “your Lydia,” he watched Peter react to the name, it had more vehemence than his reaction to Stiles’ name but was still subdued and quiet, he took the name as a promise and his eyes went very dark and his gaze fell to the floor, “she gave us a kindness when none was needed, she gave me my son," he said the words with a passion and a hurt that he could not otherwise explain, “a pair of pants is nothing in exchange.”

“I carry your heart," Peter said, “I carry it in my heart, and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whaterver a sun will salways sing is you. I carry your heart, I carry it in my heart.” He was reciting a poem, Noah reacognised, but he did not know the poem but it was obviously something that he had shared with Lydia.

"I’m losing myself,” Peter said almost subvocally, “the longer I stay here the more I forget, and I can't go back, I forget, I’m forgetting her,” and that was dam that shattered under the deluge, the final straw that overwhelmed the camel in it's inexorable plodding and with his hands on his thighs Peter bent over and started to sob, great gasping noises that were almost ululations and a sound of such exquisite anguish that Noah was prodded into movement that he had not thought himself capable of, but he was still the man who had say by her bedside for all those hours, so he stepped forward and pulled Peter, still damp, with mud all over his clothes, into his arms and held him whilst his body was wracked with sobs.

 

When Noah woke, he had guided Peter to the couch where he could cry until he was done and that had taken a long time, and at some point one or both of them had fallen asleep, and although Noah's last memories of the morning were of the two of them sat on the couch he had woken up in bed with the blanket over him, Peter was in the kitchen making coffee. He was talking in a low voice with Pan, as the cat sat on the counter paying close attention but when he saw that Noah was awake he fell quiet.

“Pan kept close watch over us," Peter said and took a cup down from the hooks under the cupboards from which they hung and filled it with coffee from the pot, “I couldn't find sugar or creamer so I’m assuming you drink your coffee black.”

“I do, thanks,” Noah said and took the cup, he scratched at his chest through his tee shirt, “You didn’t have to.”

“I pushed a button, it wasn’t a big deal,” Peter told him, his hand returning to the cat. Pan was a stand-offish cat, although not as feral or as mean as some of the cats that kept Stiles company, he was not one for affection and preferred to keep watch over Noah asleep in the space between the couch cushions, but he was indulgent over Peter, “I like the smell of coffee better than the taste," he explained.

“I slept more than I intended," Noah said.

“It’s okay,” Peter was almost shy in how he spoke, “Pan kept me company, it’ll be dark soon," he said.

“Do you know what you’ll do next?”

Peter picked up Pan, which surprised Noah because Pan was not given to manhandling but there was no scratching or yowling or attempting to get down, he just started purring, he ignored the question and walked to the window, “your phone rang,” he said, trying to change the subject, “a few times actually, someone wanted your attention but it was on silent.”

Noah, nursing the coffee cup, started to root around for his phone, he thought he had left it in the pocket of his uniform pants, but it wasn't there, and it turned out to be beside the microwave but he had no idea why it would be there. 

He had eight messages from Stiles saying call me, and four missed calls but when he tried to call him back he got no answer. That was unusual because Stiles always answered his call, he had his phone on him like an extra limb.

He never went anywhere without a pack of his cards, which he used as a sales tool, showing people his art in a handy pocket sized portfolio, and his phone because he managed his work through his phone, so it was unlikely he didn’t have it on him or had let it run out of charge, and if he had called, and not just texted his dad it was likely he wanted his attention, so the fact that he was not answering now, nor was it going straight to voice mail, worried Noah.

“We need to check on Stiles," he said, going to his shoes, “Something is wrong.”

“Something is very wrong,” Peter said, “I asked Ligeia,” Noah asked about the name, but Peter ignored him, “she’s in pain.”

Noah opened the texts, they were all on a theme when he played them through speakers, “call me, Dad, I need you to call me, call me,” but the voice mail was the same, except for one small detail, on one there was the loud tolling of bells.

“Bells?” he asked.

“Your son sent me to you,” Peter said, “he wanted Pan to keep your safe, that’s what the note said,” he was mulling it over, thinking, “he knew what was coming, he understood that the boy was a seer, Stiles was his seer, Stiles dreamed the future, and Stiles had sent him here for reasons Stiles had understood even if Peter did not.

There was only one church in Beacon Hills with bells, an automated system that tolled on the quarter hour, the half hour and with a full choral on the hour, but the old bells, the ones that predated the digital system that Mayor Hale had paid for out of her own pocket, were still there, and on a Tuesday evening a few people gathered to practise.  
On one of the calls there was a quarter hour toll, Peter knew it, he remembered it so clearly now that he had heard it, he remembered teasing his sister about it, and how she had laughed when he said that her office would be flooded by complaints about the noise, but instead the populace had fallen in love with it, and the irony of the bells being in the old catholic Church of Saint Jude, she had chosen it because Saint Jude was the patron saint of lost causes and if politics was one thing it was a lost cause.

“I know where he is.” Peter said, there was an irony in it he supposed, that whatever it was that was threatening Stiles was doing it at Saint Jude’s, it was where Peter had been buried and he had come back to avenge the family still in it’s shadow.

 

—-

 

Saint Judes church was an early twentieth century attempt at Victorian false medieval gothic and the grime of the city had stained the walls black, it was built around a Catherine window, a large circle of mullioned spokes and coloured glass that looked down over the wrought iron gates of the church and it’s congregation of weeping angels and grave bound parishioners. Above the window, staring like Sauron's baleful eye over Beacon Hills was the clock and it's tower, open to the elements, the bell had been removed years before and now it was a roost for birds.

“Are you sure it’s here?” Noah asked him, he had his gun and the shotgun from the trunk of his patrol car. 

Peter just looked at him with disdain, “you do not need to be here, it might be nothing.”

This time it was Noah’s turn to be condescending.

 

Noah kicked in the door to the church with his shotgun in hand, Peter was sure that this was going to be violent and Noah didn't want to take the risk that someone was going to hurt his son so he was taking no chances. He was right to for a young man, one with Latin coloring and a large bandage on his cheek was stood with a sub machine gun prepared, “Argent said you'd come,” he said when he saw Peter, “said I’d get my revenge for what you did to my face?”

"Infant, please," Peter said, “I have no argument with you, I didn’t shoot you,” he walked forward in a calm measured manner, “I didn’t even have a gun when I went to Baba Yaga’s," he said, “Argent is responsible for all of this.”

“Argent is a visionary,”

Peter laughed, it was a sound full of mockery, “Argent is a petty little potentate with delusions of grandeur propped up by a parasitic witch with her own agenda," he said, “he wouldn't know real power if it shot him.”

“Blake works for him," the young man, Peter thought that Argent had called him Gabe, waved around his gun, “she’s going to make me like you.”

"Like me?” Peter said, “didn’t you hear her in Baba Yaga’s? She doesn’t even know what I am, you want to be like me?” he laughed, “you don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“You are immortal,” Gabe shouted.

“No,” Peter barked, “I’m dead. You can’t kill me, because I’m already dead.”

 

—-

 

“So," Stiles said, he was sat with his back against Derek, on the wooden floor in front of the Catherine Window of the church, “we might have been kidnapped.” 

“Really?” Derek asked, “what makes you say that?" He was mocking, they were tied back to back with their hands tied together as Argent and Jennifer talked amongst themselves. Hanging in a brass bird cage that was much too small for her was the crow, the one that Stiles had called Ligeia.

“I think it was the men with guns that gave it away,” Stiles was doing something with his hands, something that agitated the plastic ties that were holding them fast, “how long do you think it will take my dad to get here with the police?” he asked.  
  


“Do you think you can get free?” Derek asked.

The crow started dancing back and forth from foot to foot and making loud squawks and caws, which covered their conversation from ARgent and Jennifer. Jennifer had taken the opportunity to change since Derek had last seen her and was wearing a pair of black pants and scoop-necked shirt.

“Working on it,” he said, he wriggled, “they didn't take my cards,” he said and there was a smile in his voice, “but I’m trying to,” there was a grunt, “yep, got it."

There was the sound of gunfire below, a pap pap sound followed by the large boof noise of a shotgun, “is that the cavalry?” 

“Working on it,” Stiles said, making weird little grunts as he twisted, doing something behind Derek's back.

“He’s here,” Argent said, which struck Derek as being a little late. “Keep an eye on them.”

“You can't take them on,” Jennifer told him, “let Gabe soften him up a bit, take out anyone stupid enough to come with,” he turned his gaze on their two prisoners, “we shall have control over him soon enough.”

“She’s lying to you,” Stiles shouted out, “can’t you smell her magic?" Jennifer took a few long strides across the wooden floor and kicked at Stiles hard in the thigh to try and shut him up. “Like damp before a storm, her power is like mould and" he grunted as she kicked him hard again. “You know as soon as she gets what she wants then she will kill you.” She kicked Stiles again, hard.

“And you’ll say anything to get out of this,” Jennifer snarled, and her hair began to seethe around her face, her power roiling around her like she was underwater.

“Oh, am I interrupting?” Peter said from the doorway.

Argent facing the knowledge of his own imminent death bolted, running up the stairs to the open belfry and away from what he believed to be the coming cataclysm. Peter grinned at Stiles and then ran up the stairs behind him.

Stiles stood up, holding the blade of what looked like a box cutter in his hands, “the problem,” he said with a smile, “with fighting magic users is you are not sure what your enemy is capable of. People always assume," he reached into his jeans and pulled out a deck of cards, “that they can do what you can do, and what is it that you can do, Jennifer, Julia, whatever your name is?”

He looked defiant despite the bruising across his face and the cast on his arm, still holding the box cutter blade, “you see," he said as he stepped closer to her and she took a step back, “I can pull things from my drawings, and I always make a point of keeping a sharpie on me somewhere, you never know when you know you need to pull a knife from a floorboard.”

He started to shuffle the cards in his hands, then moving fast through his fingers, “you tried to kill me when I was a child,” he said, “and you failed then, you should have made sure,” he turned a card and Jennifer started to clutch at her throat. Her entire appearance started to melt, showing who she was underneath, her face was a twisted monstrosity, her head bald with a few wispy hairs as white as fragile as hoar frost, and her eyes milky white, but it looked like a series of large claws had torn her face and it had healed crooked, twisted as if it had been pulled to the left and base of her jaw. 

Realising what had happened she screamed and her hands went to cover her face but the monstrosity was revealed in all its horror. “Just how old are you?” he asked, and turned a second card, she screamed and it was like the high screech of a bird and the church shook, dust falling from the wooden boards above them, the bells starting to ring on their own with her power. “I don't suppose it matters,” he turned a third card and Jennifer clutched at her throat, Stiles turned the card and looked at the design on the front. “Death,” he laughed, “how appropriate.”

 

Peter took the stairs two at a time until he reached the belfry. “I realised,” he said as he faced Argent, who seemed confused by this turn of events, he clutched the bird cage as if he thought that it would protect him. “I should have killed you at Baba Yaga’s,” he told him, “you see I thought killing that fool would be enough, but i was wrong, because he was just a pawn, if I wanted revenge for my Lydia,” he stepped closer as Gerard walked back against the four pillars that held the roof up, “I had to remove the person responsible for the fire, that was you, wasn’t it, you knew that you could not beat my sister in a fair election, and even an unfair one, so you just killed her, you sent your daughter to do it,” he took another step forward, “but you're just a selfish little coward of a man, a parasite finishing off what my sister created.” He stepped again, the floorboards creaking under his passage.

“Stop or I’ll throw this,” Argent held the cage with Ligeia inside it over the edge, “this is what makes you immortal, isn’t it? this bird, but she’s not immortal, she’s just a crow, and what happens if I kill her?”

Peter reached out and grabbed Argent by the wrist with his bare hand, “This,” Peter said and let the memories well up through him; His own memories of the fire; Brunski’s memories; Noah’s memories; and finally Lydia’s. The memories crashed into Argent like a tsunami washing him away in its path. He felt Peter’s devastation and loss, the pain he had suffered as he had died in the fire, the ache of the absence of his family, and even the sharp stab that was learning of Laura’s suicide. He felt Noah’s powerlessness in the hospital waiting beside the bed of a woman who was slowly and painfully dying. He felt Lydia’s agony and sense of violation. He felt it all and stumbled, the cage falling to the wood at his feet as Ligeia screamed and flapped her wings uselessly, but his feet reached the edge of the platform, open to the October rain as it was, and he slipped, he screamed as he fell but Peter did not stay to watch him, as behind him the Catherine Window shattered.

 

Noah ran up the stairs as the Catherine window exploded out carrying the woman in black, the one with the deformed face and strange hands through the glass and stone, Stiles was stood facing her holding up a single playing card. 

Towards the back of the upper room was a man with dark hair who was trying to cut his way through a plastic zip tie with what looked like a piece of box cutter blade and deliberately not looking at what was happening. 

Stiles stood for a moment longer before he realised that there were other people in the room, “Dad?” he asked, “what are you doing here?” It was such a reasonable question that Noah was not even surprised that he had done it.

“It’s over,” Peter said from the stairs, holding a golden bird cage in his hands with a large black crow inside.

“Uncle Peter?” the young man with the black hair and beard asked.

“Derek?” Peter said, “it is a small world indeed.”

“The witch was,” Stiles made a gesture with his hand, “and it’s done.”

“It’s done,” Peter passed the cage to Noah, “I can feel it, I remember,” he stopped, “I can go back, I can go home.”

“I,” Derek said and stepped forward, but Stiles put his hand on his arm to hold him back. “We have so much to talk about, where have you been?”

“She's calling me," Peter said and there was a look of beatific joy on his face, as if an angel was appearing before him, “I can hear her,” he looked through them, as if they were not there.

Noah opened the cage, and the bird hopped out and jumped up onto Peter’s shoulder where she nuzzled against his face for a moment and then took a few wing flaps, stretching her wings and testing the muscle before she flew away out of the window.

“What’s happening?” Noah asked, Derek didn’t seem to know either.

“He achieved what he came back for,” Stiles said, and it was a little sad, “we should get breakfast, the police will be here soon enough and it will be a mess if we’re still here.” He ignored Peter as he walked to the staircase that led through the choir's attic and down to the ground floor where Gabe had been knocked out.

“Stiles, what the fuck is going on?” Noah asked. Derek looked at them as if the only thing that shocked him was someone had asked the question before he had.

“Dad, remember when I was young and Mom and I talked about the Shining and you pretended you couldn't hear us and just went along with it,” Stiles asked? “It’s the Shining, let's go to Finstock’s and I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Hi," Derek said turning to Noah, "I’m Derek Hale and I’m just as confused as you are.”

When he looked around the room for Peter he was surprised to find that he was already gone.


End file.
